Your Role Is What Others Think It Is

Dispatch #040

You don’t lose your role all at once. You lose it in pieces: through assumptions you didn’t challenge, expectations you didn’t surface, and decisions made without you. The drift isn’t personal. It’s structural. If you don’t shape your role, the system will. And it won’t tell you when it happens.

Note: Apologies for the timing of last week’s “#039 Perception Decides Your Power”; it was an accidental skip-ahead to September’s theme of building influence and authority. The rest of July will be back to owning the evolution of your role.

Title: Your Role Is What Others Think It Is

Subtitle: Dispatch 040

3 Ideas from Me

1. Your job is not your job, unless others agree.

Your role is defined by what your stakeholders believe you are there to do, whether you have agreed to it or not. Influence begins with recognizing that your version of the role might be mismatched to expectations.

2. Stakeholders don’t calibrate to you. You calibrate to them.

Structured alignment isn’t an option; it’s the work. Role negotiation isn’t a one-time setup or onboarding ritual. It’s a continuous responsibility. Each new initiative, shift in reporting, or leadership change creates drift. Without active role negotiation, your position is quietly reshaped by others’ needs and misunderstandings—until other executives stop including you in decisions they believe aren’t “cyber” problems.

3. Ambiguity isn’t your enemy. Agreement without awareness is.

It’s tempting to accept quiet nods and vague alignment as success. A role that goes unquestioned becomes easy to redefine—and even easier to ignore. Real alignment isn’t agreement on actions—it’s shared clarity on purpose, authority, and limits. If those boundaries aren't named and updated, you’re not in control of your role. You’re reacting to everyone else’s version of it.

2 Quotes to Reflect On

“A manager is responsible for the definition of their job.”

— Peter Drucker

If you don't define the role, someone else will, usually by accident, urgency, or legacy. Responsibility starts with shaping how others see your purpose, not just how you perform it.

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control... and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence.”

— Jerry Pournelle (Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy)

If you don’t actively reshape how others see your role, bureaucracy will do it for you. Not maliciously, just by habit.

(A practical Listening Tour framework drops this week in Leverage, for CISOs who suspect their role is being defined without them.)

1 Paradigm-Shifting Question

When’s the last time you checked who’s defining your role without you?

The Dispatch is about taking it back. You’re probably not the only executive you know who needs to.