Following is an activity that I frequently use in my leadership workshops to help participants understand the difference between their Identity and their Role (see the Identity vs. Role poster for more information).  My suggestion for you is to pretend you are sitting in one of the sessions and work your way through the exercise as you read through the following and feel free to use this activity in helping others make a distinction between their Identify and their Role.

Each person is given a blank piece of paper and told to fold back the upper left and upper right-hand corners to give their piece of paper the appearance of a giant price tag. They can use their pen or pencil to push a hole midway between the two folded corners at the top of their paper to maximize the price tag
appearance.Each participant needs to be seated isolated so that no one else can see the answers they are about to write on their price tag. This will help to insure maximum honesty in the recording of the answerThe facilitator begins with an introductory statement like:

“I want you to take the piece of paper in front of you and fold back the uppermost two corners (demonstrating in the front of the room) — punching a hole in the middle of the top so that the paper now looks like a giant price tag. Imagine this price tag hanging around your own neck as I ask you the following questions. Please record your honest response onto your price tag.”

1. How much do you feel like you’re worth today ($0 is the least you can write -$100
is the most you can write).
2. What makes you think you’re worth that much?
3. What do you believe was the amount on your price tag at birth ($0-$100)? Why?
4. Why has your value increased, decreased or stayed the same?
5. What would your immediate superior at work put on your price tag? Why?
6. What would your co-workers put on your price tag? Why?
7. What would your closest friend put on your price tag? Why?
8. What would cause you immediate superior’s value of you to increase? decrease?
9. What would cause your co-workers’ value of you to increase? decrease?
10. What would cause your closest friend’s value of you to increase? decrease?
11. Go back to question one again and see the value you put there for yourself?
What would it take to cause your own value to increase from where it is?
decrease?
12. How much do you feel you’ll be worth at age 80? Why?

Usually this exercise requires very little prompting. Processing occurs immediately as you break them into small groups of 5-7 to share their reactions and learnings from their answers.

However, here are some other questions to get the group started. Take a group poll with the raising of hands using the following questions. Then have them discuss the “why’s” at their table group before gathering the answers.

1) Who put $100 on their answer to #1? Who felt like they had $100 on their price tag
at birth? Why?
2) Who put $0 for their answer to #1? Who felt like they had a $0 on their price tag at
birth? Why?
3) Who put less on their answer to #12 than they had for #1? Why?
4) Who put a higher value on their answer to #12 than they had for #1? Why?

A good summary statement to this exercise is something like this:

“We all do carry around a giant virtual price tag and far too often what is written on that price tag is merely an average of what those around us write on that price tag. W\e let others determine our worth. We go from supervisor to spouse to co-worker to friends and extend the price tag to them — asking them to write their dollar amount on the price tag. ‘What do you think I’m worth?’ is a question we are constantly asking. Then many times they stand and hold our worth hostage as they tell us what they need us to do in
order to increase the value they will write on our price tag. We are then at their mercy. Instead. . . how much better to get alone and determine the worth of ourselves by ourselves writing that on the price tag and then hiding that price tag so that no one else can get to it!”

Optional: Have them turn their Price Tag over prior to you closing statements – enumerating all the different roles that are included in their current lives (i.e. father, son, uncle, friend, lover, husband, etc.).  Acknowledge the one with the most roles.