What's the difference between having multiple work identities and being a hybrid professional?

“I have a lot of work identities. Does that make me a hybrid professional?” I get asked this question a lot, so it’s time to clear it up.

There’s a distinction between possessing multiple work identities and being a hybrid professional. From the outset, the terms may sound interchangeable, yet they represent two different concepts and ways of working. Just because a person does marketing, sales, product development, event planning, and social media in their job—portraying they have multiple work identities—doesn’t mean they’re a hybrid professional.

The difference is this: a hybrid professional works at the intersection of two or more identities. They merge identities together into some altogether new type of identity that’s a combo of the others and defies naming conventions. Alternately, a person who has multiple work identities and isn’t a hybrid is someone who uses their identities one at a time. In one moment, they’re doing social media, and in two hours, they’re doing sales. The two identities never cross paths. They remain separate and disconnected.

Let’s look at a concrete example based in product design to see multiple identity and hybridity illustrated.

The product on the left is a Swiss army knife and the product on the right is a CamelBak. A Swiss army knife is a compilation of multiple tools. The all-in-one design allows each tool to be used at any given time without having to carry around each one separately. When a specific tool is needed, the user simply slides it out of its hidden compartment. This is an example of one tool having multiple functions.

The CamelBak is a product that’s a combination of a water bottle and a backpack. Instead of carrying a water bottle in a backpack as two items created for separate purposes, the designers literally fused the functions of a water bottle and a backpack into one design. The CamelBak is a hybrid idea at the convergence of water bottles and backpacks. It’s an entirely new product that takes on characteristics of both original products and they function simultaneously. Two products are fully integrated into an entirely new product.

If we apply the Swiss army knife and CamelBak analogies back to professional identity, then the Swiss army knife represents someone who has multiple professional identities, and the CamelBak represents someone who is a hybrid professional. The key difference is integration. The Swiss army knife is not integrating all of its different tools together; it’s simply a container holding them. The tools are used separately. It only has one function at a time. Whereas the CamelBak is a whole new type of product. We didn’t have the term CamelBak until it was invented at the intersection of the two former products. A CamelBak is simultaneously acting as a water bottle/backpack in every moment. They’re inseparable.

In people, it can be difficult to tell who has multiple professional identities and who’s a hybrid professional. Usually, a person has to know it for themselves. Professionals have to have enough self-awareness to recognize their own hybridity, and then be able to explain it to colleagues. If they don’t have this self-awareness, then hybridity remains unknown and is conflated with having multiple identities. They wind up looking like a list of identities and sounding like a Swiss army knife or jack/jill-of-all-trades.

Take a look at these celebrity LinkedIn profile headers and ask yourself if they sound like multiple identity or hybrid identity profiles:

In my opinion, both Cindy Gallop and Jennifer Lopez are hybrid professionals. Gallop avoids giving herself a title and instead creatively calls herself the Michael Bay of business, an inventive way of naming her hybridity. Lopez lists her various identities, making her sound like she has five different work identities when fans know she often uses many identities simultaneously. Hybrid professionals always have the option of using only one of their identities at a time—they can revert into the multiple identity space—however, their reputation and talent is derived from their hybridity.

Now, take a look at these LinkedIn profile headers and decide which ones sound hybrid and which ones sound like multiple identities:

Are you struggling to decide which professionals have multiple identities and which ones are hybrid? Well, it’s a trick activity.

The truth is, we’ll never know which person is which unless we reach out and ask them to learn more. The point I want to make is about first impressions. Based on how each professional introduces themselves, or in this case, wrote their header—either as a list of identities or as an inventive one-of-a-kind title—it conveyed something different about them and what they do. For instance, “Life Enthusiast” is a professional identity I’ve never heard of before, and it really stands out to me. It may be a hybrid title, or it may not be. Notice how you reacted to professionals who listed many identities compared to those who wrote something more succinct and less generic.

I believe hybrid professionals with a strong grasp of their hybridity are able to articulate and summarize how their different work identities fit together. A hybrid elegantly explains the relationships between their multiple identities, and that’s what demonstrates their unique value prop.

The difference between having multiple identities and being a hybrid is integration of identities and the relationships between them.

Remember to pay attention to two things:

1) How do you introduce yourself to others—as a list of titles or as a singular job title? What are you trying to convey by doing that? And, if you believe you’re a hybrid professional, then what hybrid title are you using to condense your multiple identities into your hybrid one? Need help finding your hybrid title, then check out my workbook which leads you through five steps.

2) If other people introduce themselves as a list of identities, then how are you discerning whether or not they’re a hybrid? What questions are you asking to help you understand if they only use one identity at a time or if they’re actually marrying all of their work identities together? I have a list of questions to dig into this if you need tips. Check out chapter nine in More Than My Title where I discuss hiring and managing hybrid professionals.