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Change Letter | year 9 number 33
Multiple identities
The most difficult question to answer is: who am I? Not only because humans have multiple identities, but also because they are changing over time. That is the theme of the summer edition of this seasonal change letter.
Self-images
Basically identity is about self-image: how do you see yourself, and how do others see you? Consequently, multiple identities are about self-images too: how do you see yourself and how do others see you in different positions, personally and professionally, e.g. as a parent, runner or volunteer, and as a director, manager or employee?
People can change identities (roles) almost instantly. However identities are also changing over longer periods of time as an effect of people’s (natural) personal development process, change forces in their personal and professional environment, or both. Think for example about refugees who have to leave their home country because of politics or other severe reasons, or immigrants who hope to find a new life or expatriates who want to develop themselves in an global business environment. All these changes have an (huge) effect on people their personal and professional identities.
Hybrid identities
One of the projects I am professionally involved in concerns the identity characteristics of Young Change Makers of Vluchtelingen Organisaties Nederland (Refugee Organizations Netherlands) (refer to http://www.vluchtelingenorganisaties.nl for more details). These are highly talented refugees who are working on the campaign ‘Change for Freedom’. You could imagine that refugees in general have to deal with hybrid identities: experiences in their home country and experiences in their host country.
Another project which I have a personal interest concerns the identities of underprivileged children in the Mewingy district in Kenya. What could be their future identity or identities if they do not have the challenge to develop? They cannot make their homework for living near the Equator means that gets dark at the end of the day. Therefore, we wanted to help these children and started a project to provide schools with sustainable solar systems to ‘lighten their future’: http://www.ligthentheirfuture.nl
Of course also my personal and professional identity has changed over time. In 1996 I started, as an independent consultant, with ‘Loeve Business Support’. In 2002 I transformed my firm into ‘Delta Change Management’ and migrated professionally from a generalist in business development into a specialist in small-scale change processes and mindset change. Now after almost 15 years, with still the same name, the focus is more and more on the (social) interaction between individuals in a business context: humans conduct in everyday business life!
So, multiple identities concern self-images at a personal and professional level. If you try to answer the question I started with: ‘who am I?’, and feel an answer is coming up, or more questions, please feel free to let me know. Therefore you could mail me or contact me via my LinkedIn account.
Martin J. Loeve MBA
Martin Loeve MBA is founder and director of Delta Change Management. For over 15 years he has managed change processes for organisations and institutes and facilitated directors, managers and entrepreneurs at individual and organisational development levels, both nationally and internationally. Martin has written the book The Change Maker®, a how-to-guide for personal and business changes. In 2009 he started to work on his Ph.D. at the University of Humanistics. His research will focus on I & Otherness in the case of expatriates’ everyday lives in Bangkok.