The Liminal Condition: Choosing How You Show Up at Work
Every day at work, you are tested. You are judged on performance. Performance includes technical competence, knowledge management, and the way you show up in the moments that matter. “Showing up” is identity in motion.
Identity is the way we understand and experience ourselves, and the way others experience us, in the contexts that matter. It is a dynamic pattern shaped by our history, our relationships, and the demands of the roles we inhabit.
Work is lived in this liminal condition. You meet your identity in real time. Others meet you as you are. Identity shifts with presence, pressure, and interaction. Sometimes it slips. Sometimes it flows.
The task is to carry this tension and recognize it. Success comes when you allow yourself to notice how you show up and what influences these versions of you. In that recognition, you choose the version that fits the moment, rather than letting the moment choose for you.
A client once told me, “Every meeting feels like a challenge to who I am. I leave the room and wonder which version of me people saw.” That is the liminal condition in practice.
The relevance in everyday work
Most people in business do not speak about identity. They speak about goals, deadlines, and results. Yet identity is present in every interaction.
It shows up when you borrow a colleague’s tone because your own feels unsteady. Or when you perform confidence while doubt is loud inside. It shows up when pressure pushes you into old habits. And when recognition feels like proof that you matter.
Identity is not unique to individuals. Teams take on their own identities when the collective meets its own moments. The ‘hero’ team that defines itself as always delivering under impossible deadlines, “we are the ones who get things done.” The ‘consensus’ team that values harmony so strongly that decisions are endlessly delayed. Conflict threatens their collective self-image as cooperative, so they avoid it.
The research describes these adaptations as provisional identities.
“The resulting identities are provisional… in that they have yet to be refined with experience and internalized as enduring aspects of a coherent professional identity” (Ibarra, 1999).
In practice, these provisional selves are survival strategies. They help people cross the distance between what the business asks of them and the self they feel they can bring.
The structure underneath: how identity work actually happens
Identity work follows a structure. It is shaped by experimentation, containment, and defense.
Experimentation
People test new ways of being, then keep, refine, or discard. In daily work, people are always trying out different ways of speaking, deciding, or relating.
“Identity play involves testing possible selves, evaluating reactions, and discarding or refining them before committing to enduring change” (Ibarra, 1999).
These experiments are the raw material of identity work, and they determine which versions of us gain strength in organizational life.
Containment and identity workspaces
Growth needs settings that can hold the tension of experimentation. People need places where it is safe to rehearse without the demand for flawless execution. An identity workspace is a training ground that legitimizes trial and error, making it possible for individuals and groups to consolidate new ways of being.
“Conceptualizing leadership programs as ‘identity workspaces’ helps to meet the demand for leadership… Alongside the acquisition of knowledge and skills, identity workspaces facilitate the revision and consolidation of individual and collective identities” (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010).
Containment also shows up in relationships. Recognition, feedback, and shared interpretation can absorb anxiety that would otherwise derail experimentation.
“A relational holding environment… we define as a social context that reduces uncomfortable relational affect and facilitates relational sensemaking” (Schinoff et al., 2025).
When people feel held in this way, they can stay with the tension long enough for growth to take root, fortifying against collapse under pressure.
Defenses
When containment is absent, people reach for psychological defenses. These are automatic responses that reduce anxiety in the short term but often block growth.
“Leaders under pressure frequently regress, seeking omnipotent control or detachment. These defenses are not signs of weakness but of unresolved unconscious conflict” (Kets de Vries, 2004).
I have seen this in executives who pull every decision back onto their desk, or in managers who distance themselves completely when challenges mount. The defense provides temporary relief, but it erodes trust and effectiveness.
Defensive organizing
Defenses also take collective form. Organizations develop rituals and routines that look like discipline but function as avoidance.
“Task forces, administrative procedures, rationalization, intellectualization… reduce anxiety… [but] replace creativity, empathy, awareness, openness to change and meaning with control and impersonality” (Kets de Vries, 2004).
These patterns may calm fears in the moment, but they strip organizations of the energy and imagination needed for adaptation.
Some organizations evolve full cycles of anxiety-management that look busy and sensible, yet move people away from the real work. Research describes recurring “cycles of defensive organizing” that regulate overwhelming anxiety through narrative, structure, and ritual rather than direct engagement with the underlying problem (Fitzsimons et al., 2024).
Application to practice: recognition and choice
Identity work is rehearsal. Testing new behaviors is practice for the selves you may need in the work you do. Your leverage comes from recognition and choice. See the pattern, hold the tension, make the choice. Build settings that make this easier.
Recognition
You need mirrors that help you see how you show up. Mentors, peers, and coaches provide recognition and feedback that stabilize emerging identities. Networks matter because they are the contexts where identity is reflected, challenged, and affirmed.
“All managers need to build good working relationships with the people who can help them do their jobs” (Ibarra & Hunter, 2007).
This goes beyond networking as access to resources. Relationships shape identity because they signal back to us who we are becoming.
Choice
Once you see the pattern, you can choose a response. You can keep the borrowed style or drop it. You can notice the mask and lower it a notch. You can name the pressure and stay with your commitments.
Recognition without choice leaves you stuck. Choice without recognition risks blind repetition.
Shared responsibility
Organizations should build identity workspaces that legitimize rehearsal and provide containment.
“Identity workspaces facilitate the revision and consolidation of individual and collective identities” (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010).
These are the programs, teams, and communities where it is acceptable to learn who you are becoming, not just what you are producing.
Where organizations fail to provide such contexts, defensive patterns take over.
“Defensive organizing describes collective routines that protect members from anxiety but at the cost of learning and adaptation” (Fitzsimons et al., 2024). This is avoidance disguised as order.
Practice Principles and Reflection Questions
Notice how you show up in moments that matter.
When was the last time you paid attention to your tone, posture, or presence in a key meeting?
What did you learn about the version of yourself that appeared?
Name the pulls and pressures that bring specific versions of you to the surface.
What situations make you revert to old patterns?
Who or what has the most influence on the version of you that shows up?
Choose the version that serves the work, and rehearse it in low-risk settings.
Where can you practice new ways of speaking or deciding before the stakes are high?
How do you know when a version is ready for the moments that matter?
Build or join identity workspaces that provide recognition and containment (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010).
Where in your organization do you feel it is safe to try, fail, and learn?
Who provides the recognition that helps you stabilize new ways of being?
Interrupt defensive routines that crowd out real work (Fitzsimons et al., 2024).
What rituals or routines in your team make you feel busy but move nothing forward?
How do you interrupt them without triggering more anxiety?
Identity develops when the anxiety of becoming is contained and when recognition turns into choice. The more you notice, name, choose, and practice, the more deliberate your identity becomes.
Closing
Work is a continuous process of becoming. Each day asks you to meet the moment and to face yourself. Success rests on recognition and choice. See how you show up. See what shapes it. Choose what serves.
Relational settings that provide containment make this possible. “A relational holding environment… is a social context that reduces uncomfortable relational affect and facilitates relational sensemaking” (Schinoff et al., 2025). Early trials are normal. “The resulting identities are provisional” until experience allows consolidation (Ibarra, 1999). Defensive routines may reduce anxiety, yet they “replace creativity, empathy, awareness, openness to change and meaning with control and impersonality” (Kets de Vries, 2004).
The liminal condition is the reality of you in your work, not a flaw. Recognize it. Choose how you show up. Build contexts that help others do the same.
If what you’ve read here struck a chord, there are a few ways we could take this conversation further:
Talks & Offsites – If you’re shaping a leadership retreat or planning a gathering where you want people to think differently, I can help spark that dialogue.
Executive Coaching – For new and experienced leaders navigating complexity, change, or the unspoken dynamics in their roles, I offer one-to-one coaching as a partner in the work.
You can reach me directly if one of these feels like the right next step.
References
Fitzsimons, D., Petriglieri, J., & Petriglieri, G., (2024). The Fury Beneath the Morphing: A Theory of Defensive Organizing, Academy of Management Journal, 0 (0), 1-27
Ibarra, H. (1999). Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), 764–791.
Ibarra, H. (2004). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Harvard Business School Press.
Ibarra, H. (2018). Time for a brave new world. London Business School Review, 29(1), 2-18, pp. 10-13.
Ibarra, H., & Hunter, M. (2007). How leaders create and use networks. Harvard Business Review, 85(1), 40–47.
Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2004). Psychodynamic issues in organizational leadership. In C. L. Cooper & R. J. Burke (Eds.), The human resources revolution: Why putting people first matters (pp. 182–195). Elsevier.
Petriglieri, G., & Petriglieri, J. L. (2010). Identity workspaces: The case of business schools. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9(1), 44–60.
Schinoff, B., Pillemer, J., Rogers, K., Petriglieri, J., (2025). Blurring Boundaries in Coworker Relationships: How a Nonwork Setting Becomes a Relational Holding Environment. Organization Science, (p. 1-26)
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