Identity Elements Premium

Question 1: What are your potential benefits and business opportunities regarding appearance?

Question 2: To what extent is your physical appearance aligned with your digital appearance?

Appearance is a highly visible form of establishing membership in groups or sub-populations of interest, expressing belonging to a specific profession, mediating social status or socioeconomic class, communicating one's religion, or underpinning one's ethnicity. ​In a world where you can change almost anything on your body, appearance is one of the first identifiers for other people's appraisal. The appearance industry is a multimillion business consisting of fashion, accessories and sportswear.

Smart appearance matters everywhere. Any appearance is closely associated with various judgements, such as attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness, competence or aggressiveness. In the world of work, appearance might have to be in accordance with functional, hierarchical, social and cultural expectations. The required appearance might be a business suit, a uniform, a safety overall or casual clothing.

Question 1: What insights do you take from the gender element in your current role?

Question 2: How do the considerations connected to this identity element manifest in your team and company culture?

Sex makes us, speaking in binary terms, male or female. Gender makes us, again, in the limiting binary, masculine or feminine. A broad range of industries has generated gender division for the purpose of profit maximisation, well embedded in the biological characteristics distinguishing male and female.

Look at the gender marketing of toys and sexual objectification of women, both of which box people into narrow, old-fashioned gender models. The implication is a culture that values physicality above all other attributes.

Gender is an achieved status because it must be learned. Its code is reflected through one's lifetime, from micro things such as the colour code of sportswear, from caps to shoes, all the way through to macro issues such as the acquisition of property and the generation of wealth. Only recently has a growing awareness of gender assignment arisen, away from the binary option of female or male.

Question 1: What benefits can the opportunities presented by lifelong learning bring to your business?

Question 2: How can you utilise this identity element and strengthen it to benefit your team culture?

Lifelong learning is the fabric that changes lives, societies, and economies. It showcases life-changing stories of people progressing in their careers and achieving greater academic advancement. It has become one of the hallmarks of a meaningful life with its connection to continuous self-actualisation. Lifelong learning has thereby attracted greater attention as a worthy pursuit.

Traditionally, non-formal education would qualify as continuing education. Today's interconnected lifestyle with its digital footprint includes informal learning activities (i.e., activities undertaken with a specific learning goal outside of a teaching context). With greater access to knowledge from a wider range of channels, learning has penetrated most areas of our lives and therefore become the norm at each stage of our development – from our careers to our personal life.

Doing so has opened up a door to vast opportunities to learn and implement, learn and carry on the lessons to others or apply your existing expertise and become a teacher.

Question 1: How do you bring this identity element to life in your current context?

Question 2: In what ways do the considerations regarding digital entrepreneurship apply to your business?

The shift in demographics and the geopolitical challenges necessitate new thinking in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is inextricably linked to other identity elements: Wellbeing, Geopolitics, Communication and Lifelong learning. An ageing workforce and the rise of the gen Z and connected preferences require business leaders to act where policies often fail.

With this in mind and the opportunities, the digital economy offers, entrepreneurs have a vast pool of options to attract global talent and seize market opportunities that had been out of reach until now.
Therefore, creating an amazing brand and becoming an employer of choice is vital for business success. Leading remote teams with diverse backgrounds and geographically dispersed time zones requires new skill development.

Entrepreneurship typically creates a strong sense of identity. It ranges from pushing forward your own business to business leaders moving forward their units. The beliefs and expectations societies project upon entrepreneurs vary significantly across cultures.

Question 1: How do you bring this identity element to life in your current context?

Question 2: How can you utilise this identity element to strengthen your team and company culture?

In general terms, mobility refers to the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. Mobility ranges from the sexiness of a nomadic lifestyle to the conundrum of getting to places daily. Mobility also includes all things mobile, such as wearables and smartphones, allowing for connectedness without physical mobility.

The need for physical mobility might result from working for a prestigious employer situated in a high-tech compound outside the urban centre. The need for physical mobility implies several aspects, one of which is physical capability, which, in turn, impacts possible methods of travel from one place to another. Commuter journeys contribute a significant percentage of the working week hours and are mostly perceived as unproductive, tiring, stressful and undoubtedly unsexy. The conversations about the return to the office will continue.

In addition to its physical connotation, mobility refers to the ability to move between different societal levels, employment, or entrepreneurship.

Question 1: How can you use sociability to strengthen your team culture?

Question 2: How does sociability manifest itself in your current processes and among your network?

The identity element of sociability is profoundly context-driven. The essence of sociability is traditionally defined as the play-form of association, the pleasurable, joyful and delightful experience that comes from people's interaction in society.

Sociability, as an identity element, is brought to life by involvement in sports and other leisure activities. It might also mean the commitment to some social work, all in alignment with one's beliefs and value system, disclosed in the workplace. Although this is an intangible identity element, it is easy to make certain aspects visible, e.g., displaying artefacts connected to the specific activity or association, easing potential relationship-building efforts.

Sociability is connected to extraversion, the trait of which is characterised by sociability, assertiveness, emotional expressiveness and excitability. People who score high on this trait are often described as being outgoing and talkative, while those scoring low on this trait are described as quiet and reserved.

Question 1: How can you optimise your communication with the team and the stakeholders?

Question 2: How can you leverage the digital space for more effective communication?

Communication is the expression of ideas and views through different channels. Communication channels can be face-to-face or virtual, each with a multitude of ways to convey a message. In any case, communication requires a sender and a receiver. Communication also refers to languages and their use as first, second or other languages. As an invisible element, the use and communication styles are only displayed in interaction.

Virtual communication generates first and second impressions, often different from your intended ones. Many people still argue that face-to-face communication can help clarify conflicts. However, face-to-face communication is mainly subject to first impressions and can lead to stereotyping.

It is, therefore, wise to rely on something other than the hope that one or the other is more favourable. Instead, it could prove beneficial to focus on the essence of both forms of communication and how to leverage them based on their characteristics. For example, written, asynchronous communication has the added benefit of fine-tuning and editing, giving you more control over how you present yourself. Face-to-face communication, on the other hand, can be used to support that fine-tuned presentation in "real life".

Question 1: What do you do to make colleagues feel included?

Question 2: How can your team support inclusion when working remotely?

A global pandemic, inflationary pressures and geopolitical tensions have enormously impacted the workplace. As such, inclusion has reached an unmatched level of importance.

Nations have experienced growing inequality within their borders. The ramifications for the world of work are many: on the one hand, there is an ageing population remaining in the world of work, while on the other, the digital generation has entered their first jobs and pursuing their careers. The level of work-related worldwide migration across sectors and hierarchies is beyond compare, resulting in potential exclusion from social interactions.

We are all individually and collectively responsible for including people in the workplace and beyond – in society. So are enterprises and organisations, which should reflect inclusion on their development agenda, whether through providing remote work, ensuring age-appropriate healthcare and social services or providing adequate social protection.