Yes, you read correctly. We’ve been taught for decades ‘not to take things personally’ in various contexts – leadership, work, life, conflict, and even your mother’s advice on practically anything. Professionalism is often regarded as a compliment, and understandably so.
Treating yourself and others with respect, being reliable, behaving ‘appropriately’, remaining calm and objective in conflict situations, keeping your personal and work life separate – the list is endless, and well-meaning.
However, when detachment and dispassion start becoming proxies for professionalism, the world becomes infinitely duller, which is tragic.
As Adam Morgan writes in The Pirate Inside, “If you look at people who we regard as highly successful, and the relationships they have with their work, their jobs or businesses, their challenges and what they demand of them – it’s not a professional one, but a personal one”.
Although this perspective may seem contrary to conventional wisdom, ‘taking it personally’ is one of the most critical qualities of a challenger mindset. When done with intention, it fosters depth, accountability, excellence, and meaning in our work. It’s how we create work that, dare I say, actually makes a difference.
In many ways, challenger brands take things personally when they set themselves up to break convention and change something fundamentally wrong with the categories they play in.
The power of personal conviction
Conviction is often perceived as easier when it involves your own brand or idea. For example, the founder of W Hotel started the chain to address all the pet peeves he had with hotels and their lack of wit, warmth, and character – and that’s exactly what he’s infused into the hotel industry.
While this is often the case, you don’t need to be the founder or owner of a business or brand to take it personally. It’s about making a conscious choice to believe that what you’re doing, whether small or big, makes a difference to the organisation and the mission that organisation is set up for.
You may have heard the story of the NASA janitor whose response to the question “What do you do here?” was, “I’m here to put a man on the moon.” That’s it. Ultimately, it’s about caring deeply and simply giving a damn. This is not the soft and fluffy care that is often assumed, but a deliberate act of stewardship to sustain and nurture what matters, with high standards.
In my work in strategy consulting, I often switch between brands and categories daily. Some I am naturally excited about, and others require me to work harder at activating a personal sense of stewardship.
Undoubtedly some of my best work has come from projects I genuinely believed in, and felt personally invested in. It’s simply not possible to convince someone of something you aren’t convinced of yourself.
While I understand that not everything about our work will feel exhilarating and life changing, it is the power of personal conviction that allows us to dig deep, show up, and get things done.
Why should you care?
In a world where there’s so much competing for our time, resources, and attention – we need to engage in work and activities that feel personally important.
- Firstly, when we produce work or perform any task without care, our personal identity is at stake. This is not about seeking external validation, but about taking pride in our thinking, our ideas, our output – no matter how big or insignificant we may perceive them to be.
- Secondly, when we detach from our work (out of fear, professionalism, or self-preservation), the unfortunate result is often bland output that reinforces the status quo. For most, that’s too great a risk to bear.
How to take things personally (and not get fired)
- Be unrelenting in your standards, not your ego. Uphold your standards about quality, values, or anything else that is important to you – but ensure your emotional investment remains constructive, not volatile.
- Fight for what you believe in but demonstrate this through the rigor and application of your thinking. Show you care about the outcome, not just about being right (despite how good this may feel to all humans).
- Focus your passion or constructive disagreement on a shared mission, not personal frustration.
- When under pressure, try to activate the qualities within yourself that shift you from ‘victim’ mode to ‘neutraliser’ mode (finding a way around the problem). Even better, aim for ‘transformer’ mode where you use constraints as catalysts for new opportunities.
- Always push to let the right idea win, even if that idea isn’t yours.
- Above all, taking it personally requires you to set boundaries. I firmly believe that caring deeply does not mean being consumed to the point of burnout. We don’t need to glamourise hyper-productivity for our work or contributions to have weight in the world.
Taking it personally is not about fragility or weakness – it’s about being fiercely responsible for what you put out into the world. If for no other reason than to defeat dullness.
Nomonde Keswa is strategy director at Delta Victor Bravo (eatbigfish is represented in Africa by Delta Victor Bravo).
