New Year, New (Work) You!

And how small changes can make a big impact at work.

When I was young(er), I treated every new school year as an opportunity to reinvent myself. On the cusp of grade 7, I decided I would be sporty, and convinced my parents to buy me a Gore Tex jacket, which would surely give me the powers I needed to become the jock of my dreams. I joined the grass hockey team and, immediately after scoring a goal in our own net during our first match, quit. Our team name was The Groovy Grapes, but I was far from a groovy player.

Then there was the time my family and I vacationed in Los Angeles during the summer before grade 9, where I discovered Cross Colour jeans. Convinced I was meant to be the Canadian member of Salt-N-Pepa, I was going to march into school dripping in LA coolness. Long story short, my small town was not ready for Cross Colour jeans.

(We’re not even going to talk about the time my parents took a trip to Thailand and brought 9-year-old me a navy blue silk shirt that I thought would make me look sophisticated and chic. Instead, combined with a new, terrible haircut, it made me look more like a Blanche Devereaux on my way to another spicy tryst.)

The urge to reinvent ourselves is real. We love a glow-up story, especially when we get to be the main character. But if my personal history of failed transformations taught me anything, it’s that meaningful change doesn’t come from a full reset; it happens by making a few intentional adjustments that change how everything else functions.

And nowhere is change more desperately needed than when you’re stuck presenting an outdated version of yourself at work. A version built under old conditions, and maybe a version that no longer serves you.

One of the strange privileges of HR is proximity. You see how people bend themselves to fit systems, and how rarely organizations create space for those versions to evolve. By the time someone can articulate that something feels off, they usually already have one foot out the door.

And for my HR friends reading this: we’re not exempt. If anything, we’re often more susceptible. The role trains us to become a version of ourselves that works for the system, even when the system is working against us. We recognize this dynamic so well because many of us are living it.

So, before we head into this new year, there’s a critical question we should be asking ourselves:

Is the version of me showing up at work still serving the job I actually have, the boundaries I want, and the life I’m living?

Why bother?

Most of us shaped our work habits in response to conditions we didn’t choose. Maybe you joined a company during a chaotic period and became the reliable one. Or maybe you had a difficult manager and learned to keep your mouth shut. Maybe you went through a rough season and weren’t quite yourself, and now everyone treats that moment as your whole personality.

We teach people how to treat us without even realizing it. It’s the professional equivalent of casually mentioning to an aunt that you think penguins are cute and, seventeen years later, you’ve accumulated enough penguin figurines to open a small museum. One passing comment becomes an identity you never intended to own, and at some point, you’ve got to stop that penguin train.

Work patterns follow the same logic. Once a certain version of you becomes familiar to others, whether it’s the agreeable one, the fixer, the conflict-avoider, or the workhorse, that’s the version of you people default to. Even if you’ve evolved, the interpretation of you likely hasn’t.

Sometimes the only thing that breaks the pattern is a change within the system, like a new manager with no assumptions. Suddenly, there’s room to show who you are now, not who circumstances shaped you into at the time.

But you don’t need to wait for an opening to decide you want to be treated differently at work. You don’t need permission, and you don’t need an external event to justify changing how you show up. Waiting for the perfect opening means staying in patterns that stopped serving you a long time ago.

The desire to change your work persona is a sign that the way you’ve been operating no longer reflects the person you are. Reinvention at work is really about not letting who you used to be limit who you are now.

Changing how you’re perceived at work can be challenging. Most organizations are built to stabilize people, not to evolve them. Once you become legible in a system, the system has an incentive to keep you that way…predictability is rewarded, consistency is praised, and growth, especially when it changes how someone operates, is treated as disruption, not progress. But just because it might be tricky doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. And it definitely doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to.

And in case you’re wondering, here’s a non-exhaustive list of things you’re allowed to do at work:

• You’re allowed to ask for what you need, even if you didn’t ask for it last year (or have ever asked for it before)

• You’re allowed to change your communication style without apologizing for (or announcing) the update

• You’re allowed to set boundaries that didn’t feel possible when you first joined a company

• You’re allowed to leave space for others to carry their share of the work

• You’re allowed to stop pre-emptively softening your opinions to protect someone else’s comfort

• You’re allowed to work at a sustainable pace

• You’re allowed to be direct even if you used to be deferential

• You’re allowed to let go of responsibilities you picked up only because no one else would

• You’re allowed to redefine what “being helpful” actually means for you

• You’re allowed to stop constantly showcasing your competence

• You’re allowed to stop covering for some asshat

• You’re allowed to prioritize your own growth

• You’re allowed to show up differently

• You’re allowed to stop using coping behaviours you developed two supervisors ago

• You’re allowed to outgrow the parts of you that only existed to survive a messy system

And you’re absolutely allowed to choose work patterns that don’t leave you resentful or exhausted.

How liberating, if I do say so myself.

Signs it’s time

There’s a very specific kind of exhaustion that shows up when the version of you that operates at work no longer feels connected to who you actually are. I don’t believe in “bringing your whole self to work”…I don’t think it’s possible, and in many cases it isn’t safe. But there’s a difference between having a “professional” self and feeling like your professional self is slowly killing you.

This is an exhaustion that comes from prolonged misalignment; from spending large amounts of energy behaving in ways that run counter to your natural tendencies. You can do it. You might even be very good at it. But it comes at a cost. The further you’re pulled from how you naturally think, decide, communicate, or pace yourself, the more energy it takes just to get through the day.

Over time, that cost becomes harder to ignore. When you find yourself stuck in patterns you can’t seem to break, that’s usually the signal. The work version of you keeps repeating behaviours that no longer fit, and the mismatch starts to show up as irritation, fatigue, or a low-grade sense of dread.

None of this looks remarkable from the outside because on paper, you’re functioning, maybe even excelling. But internally, there’s a growing sense that the way you’re operating is out of step with who you are now and that maintaining this version of yourself is costing more than it should.

You don’t need a crisis to justify wanting a different way of working. You just need the recognition that you’re over it.

Ready to launch

Although I’d love to see it, I don’t recommend sauntering into work on Monday morning with a brand-new pair of Cross Colour jeans identity and announcing that you’ve rebranded.

Reinvention doesn’t have to be theatrical, and most of the time, it shouldn’t be, because in systems, dramatic swings tend to provoke counter-forces that push you right back into old patterns. And it’s worth noting something that might not be obvious: the ability to change how you show up at work is a privilege. Not everyone has the same freedom or safety to reinvent themselves at work. For many, initiating any kind of change or even just speaking up comes with real consequences. Reinvention is context-dependent.

Which means the goal isn’t to bulldoze your way into a new persona. It’s to make intentional moves that are safe for you, that are realistic in your current environment, and that are meaningful enough to create real momentum. Even small, well-placed changes can alter the system more than dramatic ones.

To introduce change that actually sticks, start here…

1. Get clear

Look at your role as it actually exists today, not as it’s written in your job description.

• What’s working and worth protecting?

• What consistently drains you?

• What no longer makes sense given who you are and what the role requires now?

Once you can see things clearly, your next moves stop feeling abstract and become obvious, and more importantly, achievable.

2. Subtract

Start by reducing the behaviours that keep pulling you back into that outdated version of yourself. Before you redesign anything, get honest about what you’re done with. Change management starts with decommissioning old processes; personal change works the same way.

Ask yourself:

• What am I doing automatically because I’ve always done it?

• Which behaviours belong to an older version of me?

• Where am I expending effort that no one is actually expecting or valuing?

Removing a single unnecessary behaviour often creates more space than adding five new ones. And then this cool thing starts to happen… when you stop over-functioning, the system is forced to adjust.

3. Reinvent a relationship

Once you stop over-functioning, the next place to look is relational. Most friction at work is about how responsibility, authority, and expectation have taken shape between people over time.

Pick one relationship where changing the dynamic would materially improve your work life because the current pattern reflects an old version of you.

Then focus on reinventing the relationship:

• Make implicit expectations explicit

• Clarify who owns what (and who doesn’t)

• Name where roles may have drifted

• Name what you need without overjustifying it

This is an opportunity to open the door for how the current version of you shows up. It’s basic systems logic: change the interaction, and the system responds.

4. Interrupt the pattern

Even with the best of intentions, in times of high stress, we revert to familiar behaviours. These are learned responses that, at some point, served us well or kept us safe. But over time, they can also teach people how to treat us.

When uber stressed, we send signals about what we will absorb, avoid, or take on without question, and those signals shape expectations. But if you’re serious about reinventing how you operate at work, this is one of the highest-leverage places to intervene.

Pay attention to the moments where your response is automatic instead of intentional:

• When you speak before you’ve fully thought something out

• When you volunteer before being asked

• When you retreat instead of clarifying what’s actually at stake

• When you assume responsibility that was never explicitly yours

Before responding, create a pause long enough to choose a different move. Ask a clarifying question instead of solving the problem. Better yet, let silence do its work instead of rushing to fill it. Leave space for others to step forward rather than stepping in yourself.

These are small interventions, but they make a difference, and over time, they change what others come to expect from you, which is where real reinvention begins.

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If you’re heading into the new year feeling overdue for a change at work, something small is usually enough to shift your work experience in a real, noticeable way. Take one thing you’ve been doing automatically and make it a choice again. That alone can change how the system responds to you.

So here’s my end-of-year wish for you: not a new identity, or a new personality, or a “new you.” Just a more current version of you, one that better reflects who you’ve become.

Oh, and tell your Aunt you’re not into penguins anymore!