Between Thoughts -Intellectual Musings

Post Resignation Series

                                         “What do you do?”

Three words. One question. And for many people who have just left a company — by choice, by force, or by exhaustion — it is the most terrifying sentence in the English language. Worse  for men.

Ask a man who has just been pushed out of work — laid off via an email, restructured away, or “voluntarily” departed — what do you do? Watch what happens. The question lands like a small grenade. A flicker. A hesitation. A scramble. Because for most men, that question was never really about occupation. It was always about identity.

Ask a man who he is and he will tell you what he does. Not what he loves. Not what he believes. Not who raised him or what keeps him awake at night. What. He. Does. Men’s identities have not been built with the layered interiority of the humanities — they have been constructed on the surface, draped in titles, roles, and designations like decorative armour. When the job goes, the armour comes off. And too many men have nothing underneath.

This is not a weakness. It is the inheritance of an old masculine script — written long ago, never revised — that reduced a man’s entire interior world to his function. The tragedy is not the job loss. It is the identity loss that follows. And most men never saw it coming, because the script told them they were doing everything right.

This also extends to ladies whose identity is wrapped up in her certificates and work  title.

Watch what happens when you ask it.

The person stiffens slightly. Their eyes move — up, sideways, somewhere that is not you. They reach, instinctively, for a word that no longer belongs to them. A title. A company name. A floor number at a headquarters they no longer have access to.

Then comes the stutter.

“I was at Google—” “I recently left Canva —”

“I’m in a bit of a transition—”

And if they are educated enough to know that ‘transition’ sounds weak, they upgrade the vocabulary:

“Taking a sabbatical.”
“Investing in myself.”
“Putting the oxygen mask on first.”

All perfectly reasonable phrases.

All completely dishonest.

THE BADGE WAS NEVER YOURS

Here is what no one tells you before you hand in that resignation letter, or before the organisation decides it no longer needs you:

The badge was on loan.

The title, the corporate email, the LinkedIn headline, the business card, the access pass, the seat at the table — all of it was rented. You paid with your hours, your ideas, your relationships, your reputation, and sometimes your health. But it was never yours. It was the organisation’s, and when the relationship ended, it took those things back.

What it could not take back — what it never actually owned — is who you are beneath all of that.

The question is whether you know what that is.
Most people have not done the interior work to even know what that sentence is.

Because here is the brutal truth: if the badge was the answer, you were never truly building yourself. You were borrowing an identity. And borrowed identities have to be returned.

THE QUESTION IS NOT CRUEL. IT IS CLARIFYING.

“What do you do?” is not a small talk question. It is a mirror.

For people who have done the work — the interior work, not just the professional work — it is easy to answer. Not because they have a clever new title, but because they know who they are when no one is watching. They know what they return to. They know what wound shaped them and what meaning they have extracted from it.

They say things like:
“I raise my daughters and I build things for people who started with nothing.”
“I study why people make the choices they make, and I try to make better ones.”
“I run. I read. I sit with men who are struggling and try not to look away.”

“I do not know yet”

These are not elevator pitches. They are not polished. They do not include a Fortune 500, JSE listed name or a round figure of revenue managed. But they are true. And truth, spoken without apology, commands a room far more effectively than any title ever did.

THREE THINGS THAT SURVIVE THE RESIGNATION

In my experience — and I have watched this pattern in myself and other  leaders across industries and continents — people who answer this question cleanly tend to carry three things that no organisation ever issued them:

The first is a relationship that predates the career. A child. A community. A God they answer to. A craft that began before the first salary. Something that would still exist if every company on earth closed tomorrow. This is the anchor. Without it, professional identity becomes the whole ocean.

The second is a wound they have made meaning from. Not a wound they are still bleeding from — those become victimhood. But a wound they have sat with, understood, and decided to do something about. A childhood in Khayelitsha is not a liability. It is a credential no MBA programme can issue. The township remembers what the boardroom has to be taught.

The third is a verb, not a noun. Not “I am a CMO or marketer” but “I build belief in things that deserve to exist.” Not “I am a manager or executive” but “I make organisations function at the level their ambitions demand.”

             Verbs survive transitions. Nouns get tied to org charts.

WHAT TO SAY HONESTLY
So what should you say — honestly — when someone asks what you do, and you are no longer carrying the badge?

                                 Say what is true.

If you do not know yet, say that too. “I am figuring out what matters to me, without someone else’s agenda attached to the answer.” That is an honest sentence. That is, in fact, a sentence that many powerful people in expensive suits cannot say.

If you know your wound and your verb and your anchor — say those. Say them simply. Say them without apology and without the performance of humility that is really just insecurity wearing good manners.

The world does not need more people who can recite a job title – and psycho babble. It has enough of those.

It needs people who know the difference between what they did and who they are.

“When I carried the badge, I never had to finish the sentence. Now I do.”

Finish the sentence.

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Between Thoughts — Intellectual Musings | Dr. Mzamo Masito

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table..