“What do you do?”
It is uniquely American to ask someone that question as an icebreaker. In moments when I’m feeling shy, I feel it’s the only question my brain conjures to fill the awkward silence. But what does it say about us as a culture that the first thing we want to know of each other is our work?
Our jobs have become shorthand for identity, value, and social placement. In many European cultures, that question comes later, if it comes up at all. Conversations tend to begin with where someone is from, what they care about, who they love, or how they experience the world. This cultural difference exposes how tightly we have fused personal worth with productivity.
Language reinforces that fusion. Even the word “employee” quietly shapes how we see people. It defines a human primarily by their function, as if the role precedes the person. This mindset shows up clearly in leadership behavior. A great deal of leadership energy is spent trying to figure out how to “work” people. That can mean refining a message until it lands just right, designing incentives to steer behavior, or crafting a communication strategy that produces compliance. These approaches often succeed in generating movement and activity, yet something essential remains missing.
And often, in the interest of optics, the conversation veers toward familiar language about putting people first, which sounds compassionate but rarely changes anything meaningful. That phrase has become so overused that it no longer offers guidance for how work should actually function. What matters more is how people experience their identity inside the organization.
And so are you a working person? Or are you a person working?
A person working enters work with a sense of self that extends beyond their role. They carry values, aspirations, and a desire to contribute something meaningful during their limited time on the planet. When those internal drivers align with an organization’s purpose and the actual work being done, something uncommon occurs. Work becomes a place where personal purpose and collective purpose intersect.
That alignment is rare, and it feels almost sacred when it happens. A person’s vocation becomes a vehicle for expressing who they are rather than a stage for performing who they think they should be. Their usefulness connects to something deeper than metrics or recognition. This is the moment when work stops feeling extractive and starts feeling generative.
Organizations often talk about ownership and accountability as if they can be installed through process or declared through leadership messaging. Posters go up, Town halls are scheduled and new language is introduced. Yet genuine care does not emerge from pressure or expectation. It grows from alignment between identity and contribution.
When people recognize themselves in the work they are doing, accountability stops being something leaders chase. Motivation does not need to be manufactured. Ownership becomes a natural extension of personal meaning rather than a requirement imposed from above. People bring energy and judgment to their work because it reflects who they are, not because someone is watching.
This distinction shapes results more than most leaders realize. Systems designed to optimize output can produce movement, but they struggle to produce excellence. Environments that honor people as whole humans create something far more durable. They invite voluntary commitment, which consistently outperforms compliance over time.
A working person is defined primarily by output and role.
A person working chooses to bring themselves fully to a task because it resonates with their sense of purpose.
That difference determines whether organizations rely on control or earn commitment. It also determines whether results plateau or compound.
When leaders stop trying to work people and instead create conditions where people choose to work, something fundamental changes. Work becomes an expression of identity rather than a drain on it.
Elsewhere In Culture
https://fortune.com/2026/01/28/fortune-500-ceos-management-results-impact
Fortune’s reporting captures a clear shift in how many CEOs are talking about performance. Results are being emphasized more explicitly, and leaders are asking employees to demonstrate tangible impact tied to business outcomes. That shift is understandable in a moment shaped by AI acceleration, economic pressure, and heightened scrutiny from boards and investors. Work has always been about producing value, and most employees expect to be held accountable for the outcomes they deliver. What changes culture, though, is the way those expectations are framed and reinforced. When performance conversations center only on output without shared clarity around priorities, tradeoffs, and decision rights, people narrow their focus to what feels safest and most measurable. Culture becomes cautious, transactional, and optimized for short-term wins rather than durable performance.
Workplace culture determines whether a results-driven environment strengthens or weakens an organization over time. Cultures built on trust, clarity, and ownership allow people to pursue results while still exercising judgment, creativity, and collaboration. People understand how their work connects to the organization’s goals, and accountability feels purposeful rather than threatening. Cultures driven primarily by fear or constant pressure produce a different outcome. Employees protect themselves, limit experimentation, and aim for visible wins even when deeper problems remain unsolved. Leaders may see clean numbers in the short run, while innovation, learning, and resilience quietly erode. Sustainable results come from cultures that pair high expectations with alignment and autonomy, where impact is demanded and people are trusted to figure out how to achieve it.
Mary Barra’s habit of responding by hand to every letter she receives feels almost radical in a moment when leadership is increasingly buffered by technology, staff layers, and carefully curated information flows. Running a $75 billion company already demands constant attention, and yet she protects a direct channel to customers, employees, and even strangers who take the time to write. That choice signals something important about where power actually lives inside an organization. When leaders lose contact with the edges of the business, culture turns into a story leadership tells itself rather than a reflection of lived experience. Handwritten notes slow the leader down enough to feel what is happening, not through dashboards or summaries, but through real voices carrying real emotion. That kind of contact keeps leadership grounded in reality rather than insulated by scale.
This is why the story matters for workplace culture, not as a feel-good anecdote, but as a reminder of how culture is formed. Culture shows up in small, human moments that communicate who is seen, who matters, and who gets heard. A handwritten note creates an experience that no all-hands deck or executive memo can replicate. It reinforces trust, dignity, and connection in environments that often feel transactional and distant, especially in remote and hybrid settings. When leaders create personal points of contact, they shorten feedback loops and preserve humanity inside complex systems. Over time, those moments accumulate into loyalty, accountability, and discretionary effort. Culture does not live in slogans or strategies. It lives in whether people feel recognized as humans inside the work, and leaders like Barra demonstrate that this responsibility does not disappear as organizations grow.