From strategic HR to identity work: tracing the evolution of professional self

There is a strange, almost hereditary symmetry in how I arrived at my work. I often joke that I did not choose between art and HR. I inherited both.

My father headed the personnel division of a large public sector organisation in northern India, back when HR was still called “personnel” and the word carried weight. It was a discipline built on judgement and steadiness more than systems and dashboards. I grew up watching the quiet authority of a man known, affectionately and accurately, as “Mr Punctuality”. He was respected by management and trusted by a union famous for its resistance. He never needed theatrics. His authority came from consistency. He was fair, prepared, and impossible to rattle.

What stayed with me even more was that his professional identity never eclipsed his artistic one. He was a classical instrumentalist with the same seriousness he brought to his office. Art almost strengthened both sides equally. Even within a rigid system, he redesigned interviews to give weight to extracurricular excellence, long before such thinking became fashionable. I grew up watching discipline and expression sit comfortably in the same life.

When I entered HR decades later, the landscape had shifted. Global business models were rewriting the function. HR was becoming strategic, analytical, tightly tied to business growth. I built teams, led learning functions, shaped talent strategy, and grew into leadership during that transition. By every conventional measure, the career was working.

Yet something felt unfinished. A sense that competence alone was not the whole story.

I was a trained performing artist and that identity was struggling to keep pace with my professional one. As responsibility expanded, art became something I visited rather than inhabited. The more effective I became at work, the more I felt a split between what I delivered and what I carried within. Careers progress neatly. Identity does not.

The shift came slowly. I began noticing the same pattern in leadership rooms. Capable professionals stumbling in moments that required presence rather than expertise. They could present strategy flawlessly yet freeze in unscripted conversation. They managed numbers but not emotional temperature. Traditional training improved understanding, but behaviour under pressure rarely changed.

Much of corporate training still assumes that prolonged exposure to slides will produce transformation. Experience suggests otherwise. Behaviour changes only when it is confronted.

That realisation pushed me to experiment.

From those experiments grew ‘Leap Room’, my mindshift programme. It combines theatre, voice, movement, humour and the Parent–Adult–Child framework of transactional analysis to work directly with how leaders show up, not just what they know. The room slows interaction down long enough for people to see themselves clearly.

The first few minutes are usually awkward. Senior leaders are not accustomed to clapping in rhythm or speaking without notes. Titles offer no protection here. That discomfort is deliberate. It levels the room faster than any organisational chart.

Once the awkwardness passes, patterns surface. A clipped tone. A defensive joke. A posture that signals control. Leaders recognise the critical Parent in their language, the compliant Child in their reactions, and the steadiness of the Adult state when communication becomes clean. When behaviour is seen plainly, it becomes editable. That recognition stays longer than any checklist.

Research supports what practitioners have observed for years: people retain far more when they actively participate than when they passively listen. In leadership, where behaviour under stress defines effectiveness, that difference matters. People remember what they experience.

What emerges in these rooms is a rare mix of challenge and safety. Participants are pushed, but the work is playful enough to bypass defensiveness. I have watched senior professionals laugh at habits they had defended for years. Insight arrives not as instruction, but as recognition. That moment when someone sees themselves without judgement, is where change begins.

This direction was not a rejection of my HR career; it was its continuation. Strategic HR gave me structure. Art gave me access to the inner life of leadership. The part that shapes decisions long before they are visible on paper. I was no longer interested only in building capability. I wanted to work at the level of identity.

My hope is to see this approach travel into organisations and educational spaces ready to treat expressive intelligence as essential. We prepare students to qualify and professionals to compete. We do not always prepare them to understand their own voice. That absence eventually appears in every boardroom.

Looking back, I see less of a pivot and more of a convergence. Systems on one side. Expression on the other. Bringing them together feels less like reinvention and more like returning to something I recognised early: discipline and art refine each other.

If this work grows to the scale I imagine, I will consider it a quiet fulfilment. A professional life where rigour and expression no longer compete. They simply work together. And in that balance, identity stops pulling in two directions.

Key Takeaways

• Professional identity often evolves through convergence, not reinvention. What appears as a career pivot is frequently a return to long-held values and influences.

• Strategic competence alone is insufficient for leadership. Presence, emotional regulation, and behavioural awareness determine effectiveness under pressure.

• Identity is shaped by how leaders show up, not just what they know. Expertise may guide decisions, but behaviour defines credibility and trust.

• Experiential learning changes behaviour more reliably than instruction. People retain and integrate insight when they experience it physically and emotionally.

• Discomfort can be a powerful equaliser. When titles fall away, patterns in tone, posture, and reaction become visible and editable.

• Expressive intelligence is essential, not decorative. Voice, movement, humour, and presence directly influence leadership impact.

• Art and structure strengthen each other. Discipline provides rigour; expression provides access to inner states that shape action.

• Behavioural insight emerges through recognition, not correction. Change begins when individuals see themselves without judgement.

• Identity work deepens strategic HR. It moves development from capability building to coherence and alignment.

• Leadership maturity lies in integration. When rigour and expression work together, identity stabilises rather than fragments.

Curator's Note

This reflection explores identity not as expertise accumulated, but as presence revealed under pressure. By bringing structure and expression into the same room, Sohini shows how leadership identity is shaped through behaviour, not theory. A reminder that who we are becoming is often visible in moments where titles offer no protection.

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