# The identity constraint _Before you fix the skills gap, check the identity gap._ --- A team of eight has been through a twelve-week programme on root cause analysis. They can draw fishbone diagrams, run five-whys, build storyboards. Six months later the operations director notices that when something breaks, the team still escalates it upstairs and waits. The training evaluation said "confident." The behaviour says otherwise. The gap is not capability. The team learned the tools. But they still see themselves as implementers, people who execute what's handed down, not people who diagnose and fix. "I'm someone who spots problems early" opens a different set of moves than "that's not really my call." Skills sit behind a gate, and the gate is self-image. --- This shapes teams more than most managers realise. How your people see themselves governs which of their skills they actually use, which risks they take, and how far they reach before pulling back. That self-image is being shaped all the time, by design or by accident, and the shaping happens in ordinary moments that pass without comment. --- Start a team meeting with recent wins and you signal that progress matters. Start with customer stories and you reinforce external focus. A team that always begins with "what we've learned since last week" soon sees itself as a learning organisation. These small rituals feel trivial. They are framing identity every time. Every error offers shame or learning, and [[Two halves of trust]] shapes which one your team reaches for. "Why didn't you spot this earlier?" reinforces one identity. "What helped you notice it when you did?" reinforces another. Treat near-misses as system feedback and people start to see themselves as practitioners, not perfectionists. The shift changes who they think they are. You get what you repeatedly inquire about. If you always ask about deadlines, task efficiency becomes the identity. Ask about learning, impact, or stakeholder reaction and you shift the lens. "What's one insight from this project we can carry forward?" turns reflection into part of the job, not something bolted on afterwards. When every issue gets escalated upwards, the team absorbs the identity of order-takers. Introduce a simple standard method, a root cause analysis, a pre-mortem, a storyboard slide, and you normalise problem-solving as part of who they are. The difference between "flag it for the boss" and "bring a recommendation" is a different kind of person. Decision frameworks like RAPID or DACI do more than organise governance. They tell people: this is how things happen here, and you're part of it. Who gets input, who owns the call, how visible the rationale is. Those signals accumulate into a story about how power works and where each person fits inside it. --- Step back and the pattern becomes clearer. None of these five touchpoints requires budget, headcount, or a change programme. They are all things you are already doing, every week, whether you think about them or not. The question is what identity they are reinforcing. A team that has been subtly told "you execute, we decide" will behave accordingly, no matter how many workshops you send them on. The operations director watching her trained team still escalate every problem is not seeing a training failure. She is seeing an identity constraint. --- Look at your last three team meetings. What did you open with? What questions did you ask? How did you respond when something went wrong? Those moments are shaping who your team thinks they are. If you don't design them intentionally, they're designing themselves. ---