Who Are You When Nobody Is Watching? Stop Leaving Your Identity Open to Other People's Interpretation.

(What professional sport taught me about identity, values and why perception always follows behaviour)

"It's not about the name on the back of the jersey. It's about knowing what you stand for." — Phil Jackson

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I have asked a lot of people the same question over the years. Athletes at the start of their careers, professionals who have been at the top of their field for a long time, people somewhere in the middle wondering why they can’t quite close the gap between where they are and where they know they could be.

The question is a simple one, but it’s surprising how often people struggle to answer it properly.

Do you actually know who you are trying to be?

Because in my experience, that question is where almost everything else begins.

The performers I watch operate most consistently in elite sport — the ones who keep going when their form dips, or when selection goes against them, or when the pressure becomes relentless — are rarely the most naturally talented people in the room. They are the ones who are clearest on who they are and what they stand for, so that when the difficult moments arrive, they already know how to respond.

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Identity

Some years ago, I was asked to give a presentation to a women’s rugby team after one of their training sessions.

The women’s game was in a very different place then. The coverage was minimal, the audiences were small and the idea that women’s rugby would one day fill stadiums and command serious broadcast deals felt, to most people, like an optimistic stretch. But these women were playing seriously, training seriously and beginning to attract a little attention — and with that attention came something none of them had been properly prepared for.

A public profile.

I had been asked to talk to them about media training. About how to handle interviews, how to avoid being misquoted, how a sub-editor could pull three words out of context and turn a perfectly reasonable answer into a headline that bore no resemblance to what they had actually said. About why “no comment” is almost never the right answer and why the way you present yourself publicly matters far more than most people realise until it is too late.

But as I stood in front of them, I found myself talking about something slightly different. Something that went deeper than interview technique or social media strategy.

I was talking about identity.

About knowing, with enough conviction, who you are and what you stand for, so that when the cameras are on, or the attention grows, or someone tries to write a story about you that is not true, you already have a version of yourself that is so clear and so consistent that none of it sticks.

I had my dad’s voice somewhere in the back of my mind as I spoke. He had a saying he applied to everything: ‘a good product doesn’t need advertising’. And for most of my career, I had believed that. I had kept my head down, done the work and trusted that the quality of it would speak for itself. In many ways, I still believe it. When I am working, I work. I don’t stop to collect content or document the moment, because the work itself is what matters to me and that is part of my identity.

But I had also learned, the hard way, that perception doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It forms whether you shape it or not. And if you leave it to chance, other people will shape it for you.

I learned this during one of the most disorienting periods of my career.

I was new to a role inside a professional rugby club, young, female and arriving into an environment where everyone already knew each other and assumptions formed quickly.

For a few weeks I tried to ignore the fact that my going out after matches was causing a stir. I had done it before I started working there, so why should I stop? I was getting my job done. What did it matter? But the rumour mill was relentless and it was actively getting me down. I can’t even remember what tipped me over the edge, but about six weeks in I rang my best friend and told her I just didn’t think I could do it. That it was just too hard.

She told me to get to Christmas and then decide.

Shortly after, one of the players rang me. He could see what the environment was doing and he offered some advice I really didn’t want to hear. Keep your head down, he said. Stop going out for a while. Don’t give them anything to talk about. Let your work speak for itself first.

I pushed back because it felt deeply unfair that I should have to modify my behaviour when I hadn’t done anything wrong. But somewhere underneath the frustration, I knew he was right.

So I made a decision.

I stopped going out. I refused to be drawn into conversations that had nothing to do with my work. I became very deliberate about how I showed up, how I communicated, how I responded to ‘batner’ and how I carried myself when things weren’t going to plan.

By the end of that first season, the narrative changed. Their perception of me had changed. It wasn’t plain sailing and I won’t pretend it was, but the real sign of it was when they began to ask for my help. The players who had once doubted my reasons for being there were coming to me to help raise their profiles, to get them column inches, to build the kind of public narrative that might catch the eye of a national selector.

What changed wasn’t my talent or my effort. Those had always been there.

What changed was that I stopped leaving my identity open to other people’s interpretation.

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Perception

What I understood then, and have come to understand more deeply since, is that the reason the perception work felt so hard in the beginning was because I hadn’t clearly defined who I was trying to be. I was responding to my environment with a pre-conceived idea of how I thought should be, rather than sticking closely to who I actually was.

I was reacting to the environment rather than operating from a clear internal standard.

In elite sport, the performers who operate most consistently under pressure are rarely the most naturally talented. They are the ones who are clearest on who they are, what they will and won’t compromise on and how they intend to show up regardless of the circumstances around them.

But knowing who you are, in work and in our personal lives, has to be defined deliberately. And once it is defined, it has to be lived, not occasionally, not when it feels convenient, but consistently enough that it becomes the thing other people can rely on.

You cannot control directly how other people see you. But you can control your standards, your behaviour and your consistency. And if you do that with enough conviction, the perception takes care of itself.

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Who Are You?

The framework I return to, both from my years in sport and in the work I do now, starts with three questions. They sound simple. They are not.

What is your mission?

Go beyond your job title and what you do for other people. What are you genuinely trying to build or become? A writer might say: I want to publish work that shines a light on stories that would otherwise go untold. A professional might say: I want to lead a team that performs consistently without burning people out. What would success look like for you in three years if you were brave enough to say it out loud and mean it?

What are your non-negotiable values?

The things you will not compromise regardless of pressure, convenience or what other people think. The distinction that matters here is between an aspiration and a standard. An aspiration is something you hope to live up to. A standard is something you hold yourself to even when it costs you something. If you say honesty is a value but you regularly soften the truth to avoid difficult conversations, it is an aspiration. Your values only become real when they survive contact with a difficult moment.

What perception supports the person you are becoming?

If you know your mission and your values, ask yourself honestly whether the way you show up reflects that. Does your behaviour on a difficult day reinforce who you say you are, or does it quietly contradict it? If you want to be known as someone who delivers under pressure, are you preparing properly or hoping it will come together on the day?

Once you have answered those three questions honestly, you have to live by all of them in everything that you do. That is the part most people skip. They do the exercise, write down the answers and then carry on exactly as before. But the mission, the values and the perception only become real when your behaviour reflects them consistently, on the days when it costs you something, when nobody is watching and when it would be far easier to let it slide.

When you do that…

You stop reacting to other people’s stories about you. You stop needing their validation to feel confident in your own ability. You stop being blown off course by every difficult moment or piece of criticism, because you have an internal standard that the external noise cannot easily reach.

That is not confidence as a feeling. That is confidence as a way of operating. And in my experience, it is the only version that means anything when the pressure is on.

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This framework — defining your mission, your values and your operating identity — sits at the core of Week 2 of The Performance System. If you want to work through it properly, with direct personal feedback from me, the waitlist is open here