Not everyone is a hybrid professional, and here’s why

This may shock you, but you might not be a hybrid professional. In fact, you might not be an expert or a generalist either.

I know this is a lot to process, but hang on, I'll explain.

Recently, I received some pushback:

"Sarabeth, isn't everyone a hybrid professional? I mean, come on, we're all combinations of different professional identities."

And that's like me saying,

"Hey, isn't everyone an expert?"

See the logic? Everyone isn't everything. Some people are experts, some are generalists, and some are hybrids.

Or, instead of people. Let's use products.

Isn't every pluot really just a plum, or every backpack really a CamelBak, or every car really a hybrid vehicle?

At this point, I'm imagining a voice booming down from the heavens getting ready to give me a reality check:

"Seriously? Pluots are genetic combos of plums and apricots, Camelbaks are one-of-a-kind waterbottle-backpacks, and gas powered vehicles are definitely not electric and gas. These are hybrid creations!"

You see, the heavens have a point.

We can argue that everything in the world is a combination of parts, but NOT everything is a hybrid.

The difference is INTEGRATION, interdependencies, and inseparability. Two or more parts becoming one.

You cannot break a pluot apart and eat it as half a plum and half an apricot. That's not how it works.

​In fact, if we're going to get into the nitty gritty of pluots, it turns out there's a whole family of genetically-crossed offspring of the two main fruits, and they are NOT all the same. (Info from Temple of the Tongue).

Whoa. There's a mind bender.

More and more types of hybrid fruit are being created all the time, and they have hybrid names like pluerry and peacharine.

Just like hybrid fruit, hybrid professionals inextricably link, merge, and fuse their work identities into something entirely NEW and YET-TO-BE-NAMED.

We didn't have a name for a pluot, so we combined the words together because we needed to call it SOMETHING. Have you ever met an artpreneur or a hairipist? I have. Same thing.

They don't know what else to call themselves because they're both.

Back to my original point, everyone can become a hybrid professional, but that doesn't mean everyone is a hybrid.

From my research, most people have to: a) realize they're a hybrid, and b) learn how to manage their hybridity. It's not something they wake up and "become" overnight.

Hybrid professionals are one type of professional identity just as some people are experts and others are generalists. Capeesh?