Supplemental Essay: Persona and Agenda

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Persona

In the main essay (in the "Description of Sensing" section) I said narratives are stories that we create in order to explain reality. We seek causality, consistency, and coherence in events around us and develop a system of narratives to explain those events. 

 

From there we establish a persona as a framework for responding to events and living out our narratives. A persona is how you see yourself and how you present yourself to the world. "Persona" is the Latin word for a mask worn by an actor to represent a character in a play. It is a mix of your narratives, desires, and strengths that is subsequently modified by what the community wants; in other words your persona is a triangulation between your needs and society's needs. 

 

A persona gives us definition, direction, and personal boundaries. When sufficiently fleshed out and tested against reality, our persona defines our character: It springs from the mental and moral qualities distinctive to us as individuals and serves to guide us through life.

• With a persona we can seize the initiative, set appropriate boundaries, and negotiate with others appropriately. We take a measure of leadership in relationships.

• Without a persona, we float along directionless and tend to get pulled easily into other people's agendas; we tend to let outside circumstances or other people define us. We risk surrendering leadership to others and enabling them in the achievement of their needs and objectives (which may run contrary to our own needs and objectives).

 

Building a persona

Our persona starts out as a natural outgrowth of our narratives, but we can fine-tune it as needed. We can consciously and deliberately choose what kind of image we want to project. For example, as we grow into adults we take on new social roles and we develop corresponding personas with the aim of demonstrating consistency and efficacy in those roles: Reliable friend, responsible citizen, partner in a relationship, manager in the workplace, leader in the world, etc.

 

Ideally in the course of developing personas we prefer to take into account our natural strengths and weaknesses. As we grow into adults we go through all the developmental stages and gain access to the full panoply of psychological functions, but we have preferences among them; we are stronger at some and weaker at others. So it's best if we can be aware of our natural character strengths and innate talents and match them to suitable personas and careers.

 

For example, when taking on a managerial role in the workplace for the first time, think of the different management styles that you've seen in different bosses in the past, try them on in your imagination, and see which works best for you. Imagine that you are a character in a play or movie, experiment with a persona like a dramatic role, and then practice playing out that role in real life.

 

Remember that you have to live these roles on a daily basis, in some cases for the rest of your life. Personas are a triangulation between your needs and society's needs; so ensure that your own needs are met by making your persona as close as possible to your natural strengths and talents. Never try to be all things to all people. Pare your guiding principles down to a few important concepts and rules. Develop a focused, strong foundation, and keep that in front of you. New ideas are evaluated based on how they relate to the existing foundation.

 

The use of personas in this manner usually falls under the category of personal development and "life hacks." In his book Mastery, the classicist Robert Greene says, "You must see the creation of a persona as a key element in social intelligence, not something evil or demonic. We all wear masks in the social arena, playing different roles to suit the different environments we pass through. You are simply becoming more conscious of the process."[1]

 

In a number of his books, the psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw talks about the need to develop a "defined product" or "defined image" in much the same manner. "Everybody--including you and me--presents their image in a way that makes a statement, a statement about who they are. You obviously have to be very mindful of that statement, that image, every time you step out, especially into the competitive world, because it sets an important tone for all that happens in your world."[2] He goes on to say: "You teach people how to treat you. If you want to be treated with dignity and respect, then you must carry yourself with dignity and respect."[3]

 

As I said above, your narratives have to exhibit the qualities of causality, consistency, and coherence. Your persona is an outgrowth of your narratives, so it too should exhibit the same qualities. Dr. McGraw puts great emphasis on the need for authenticity: "You have to decide how you're going to project yourself to the world. Once you do, you must commit to it 100 percent." He says it's not a question of being a phony. "I think it is important that your image, the image you consciously decide to project to other people, is authentic and congruent with who you really are."[4]

 

Dr. McGraw notes that you will cycle among different personas depending on the setting: "You might make somewhat different statements in various settings because you are not a one-dimensional, one-trick pony. But even those differing statements should be authentic and consistent with your chosen projected image. For example, as a woman, you might have a business persona that reflects your commitment and seriousness. But when you're in a dating or romantic setting, you might find that persona simply doesn't work for you because it can be intimidating to men. So, in a romantic situation, you may want to rotate other authentic characteristics to the forefront. It is still you, still consistent with your image, but is a different part of who you are."[5]

 

Dr. McGraw also suggests that there should be some firewalls between different personas: Flippancy and silliness at home should be left at home and not impact the workplace, just as rigor and strictness in the workplace should be left at the workplace and not be brought home to one's partner and children.[6]

 

Persona as a self-guide

Also, personas aren't just something that you exhibit to the world. If you want to make real and substantive changes in your own life, then you need the causality, consistency, and coherence of an authentic persona there too.

 

In his book The 20/20 Diet Dr. McGraw provides a diet-and-exercise regimen for long-term weight loss. At the end of the book he says that it's not enough just to lose the weight; you also have to keep it off for the rest of your life. Willpower is not enough; you need a persona devoted to that goal. You need to become "that guy" who is fit, who makes nutritious and healthy choices when ordering at a restaurant, who creates time in his schedule for exercise even if it means putting the needs of others second, and so on. Your persona is a self-image that you adopt and practice for a lifetime.[7]

 

Ideally a persona should apply both to peak experiences (times of great conflict, passion, loss, etc.) and also to everyday life. In fact, it's often in the mundane details of everyday life where that framework is needed most: We need a persona embodying our guidelines, beliefs, or ethics to steer us through the petty annoyances, temptations, and grievances that pop up in daily life.

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Agenda

In order to act in accordance with a persona, it is useful to develop and implement appropriate strategies. A persona is a picture of who you are, while an agenda is a script that tells you how to practice and realize that picture from one day to the next. Agendas provide you with focus and personal agency; they support your engagement with the world around you. 

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Agendas can be short-term or long-term.

 

Short-term agendas

A short-term agenda can be a rule, process, campaign, affirmation, talking point, etc. You work out rules that support your persona throughout the day, on the moment-to-moment level: Mottos for handling obstacles, self-encouragement & affirmations that get you through the day, talking points for dealing with others. Examples:

• Resolve to invest 20 minutes per day on a chore that you have been putting off

• Resolve to keep your temper in a difficult discussion with a coworker

• Resolve to drink a cup of tea after meals instead of indulging in calorie-heavy desserts

 

Long-term agendas

A long-term agenda is a general attitude you take in order to better embody a preferred persona. For example:

 

The non-victim: Playing the victim is positive insofar as you can let out a lot of resentment and anger that way. On the other hand, playing the victim is negative in that you end up constructing a self-defeating narrative: "I'm a good guy who can't get ahead because all the petty, angry, venal people around me drag me down." So you decide to construct a more positive persona: You decide that henceforth you will be "that guy who figures out how to get past obstacles." You work up an agenda to help you:

• Some challenges may seem a nightmare to you, but you know that in fact they are easy and even enjoyable for other people. So you adjust your self-image to include the idea that you are willing to work to become competent at such challenges.

• You then figure out how the others handle that challenge--check the internet, consult other knowledgeable people. You ask yourself what that other guy would do to address the problem. 

• You tackle the problem repeatedly; you break it up into small achievable steps; you don't get hung up on obstacles; you are prepared to try out different approaches and fail multiple times just to see what happens; you do things quick and dirty and take notes on the results, etc.

 

The team leader: You get promoted to a team leadership position for the first time, with a team of rank-and-file workers who report directly to you. You know the workers, they seem trained and competent, and you don't expect to have any problem giving them orders and delegating responsibility to them. Still, you're just a middleman. Tasks and assignments roll down from top-level management and they can be onerous and even unfair or impossible. Meantime your subordinates are in a position to work well or poorly or even sabotage the work depending on their mood. Either way, you are responsible for the results. So you focus your agenda on defining what kind of manager you'll be: 

 

• Your agenda is to be transparent, an honest broker to both parties. You only have exactly as much power as the higher-ups give you, and you can only accomplish exactly as much work as your subordinates are willing to provide. So you respect and work within that framework. You don't set yourself against either the higher-ups or the subordinates; you don't champion one against the other. It's easy to get caught in a squeeze play between the two if you take that approach.

• You keep in mind that you don't own the company, set policy, and sign the paychecks--that's the job of the executives and owner. And you don't do the work yourself--that's the job of the workers. So you don't make your managerial style about you personally. Instead you facilitate the flow of information so that your subordinates and leadership know what each other needs. You make use of your ability to "manage up" and "manage down" to facilitate communication in both directions and try to ensure a good fit between leadership's tasks and the workers' performance capacity. 

• And so on. As a new manager you will last a lot longer--and keep a clearer conscience--if you keep in mind that you're a middleman between two very different stakeholders, and you focus on adding value by balancing and coordinating the needs of both. You're not an innovator. Your agenda is to embody company policy and be a good, fair, and reliable conduit of information between subordinates and leadership.

 

Absence of an agenda

Some people will say that an agenda sounds too deliberate, too calculated. They will suggest that we all should be able to get through life on the basis of good feelings and improvisation. For example, what about with friends, family, and social acquaintances--should we have an agenda when dealing with the people closest to us?

 

The ideal social situation would be a bunch of friends just conversing without agenda or goal. When we are young, we often have no agenda and allow a friend or a group of friends to take the lead. That can be fun and a good learning experience at an age when we are still trying to figure out where we fit in the world: We ride on the coattails of others and observe how they do things.

 

But if you are always yielding the lead to others, you tend to end up lower down in the pecking order and sooner or later people may take advantage of you. People who are low on the pecking order tend to become cheap labor or even "cannon fodder" in the agendas of those higher on the pecking order; without an agenda, it's easy to get sucked into the plans and expectations of others. Conforming to people's expectations is safe and comfortable, but you increasingly end up in situations and jobs and relationships that may be a bad fit for you.

 

In the book Self Matters Dr. Phil McGraw says, "The world is not devoted to your nurturance. It is devoted to your conformity and compliance, independent of how that dovetails with your gifts, skills, abilities, wants, and visions."[8]

 

In the book The 50th Law the authors 50 Cent and Robert Greene say that much of your identity is shaped and constructed by outside forces; you internalize the criticisms and judgments of family and society. "Many of these criticisms and opinions are not objective at all. People want to see certain qualities in you. They project onto you their own fears and fantasies. They want you to fit a conventional pattern [...] All of this shapes your personality, limits your range of behavior, and becomes like a mask that hardens on your face."[9]

 

Friends and family usually aren't trying to trample upon your autonomy deliberately. Often they are simply misled by your acquiescence to whatever they propose. They can't know which of their various initiatives might run counter to your own interests if you won't tell them. 

 

In other words even when you don't have a specific agenda of your own to counter the agendas of people around you, it's still useful to ask questions and vocalize any objections, misgivings, etc. that you might have in response to the agendas of others. The more that you can modify a group agenda to reflect your own concerns, the more you can take ownership of and responsibility for the group agenda.

 

Communicating your agenda

Generally speaking, however, when you encounter someone with an agenda it's good to have an agenda yourself. And put your agenda into practice or otherwise communicate it to the other person as soon as possible. If you are at a gym, then strike up a conversation with a stranger and talk about your fitness goals. If you are at a party, talk about how you got invited and what you hope to accomplish there. The two of you can then compare notes, determine the degree to which your agendas coincide, and proceed from there. Don't be afraid to get disagreements out in the open. People have their own agendas; you have yours. That doesn't make you a threat to each other. Respect the rights of others to have their own opinions about the world, and insist that they do the same for you.

 

When practicing or communicating your agenda, try to avoid two pitfalls:

• Don't act cagey and make people guess what your agenda is. That is passive-aggressive and tends to make people paranoid. Likewise, if someone peppers you with questions about an issue but doesn't reveal where they themselves stand on the issue, simply change the subject. Practice the rule "Say what you mean and mean what you say"; it indicates self-confidence, stability, and honesty. And insist on the same from others.

• Don't bully people with your agenda. Social situations aren't the appropriate time to get into extended debates about politics, religion, sex, etc. Declare your position and then be willing to change the subject if the other party reacts strongly. Keep it light.

 

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche defined the qualities of a nobleman as follows: "Apparent frivolity in word, dress, bearing, through which a stoic severity and self-constraint protects itself against all immodest inquisitiveness. Slowness of gesture, and of glance."[10] This is a good recipe for socializing: Be chatty and even garrulous, keep the conversation light and jocular, and welcome opinions that differ from your own. But also be quick to erect boundaries against "immodest inquisitiveness" in the sense that if someone pushes their agenda on you or opposes your agenda too aggressively, then cut them off.

 

The investment guru Warren Buffet famously said: “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” His point was that really successful people treat their time and attention as a valuable resource and don't share that resource with others lightly. The same rough principle applies to competing agendas. Other people have a right to their own agenda, but they have no right to push that agenda on you. If someone wastes your time by launching into a tirade and browbeating you with their viewpoint, simply indicate that you're not interested in discussing the subject further. Don't waste time on never-ending debates with zealots of one stripe or another.

 

On the other hand, if the other party shows appropriate respect for your opinion or agenda, then there is no harm in discussing differences of opinion. A lot of social conversation consists of people clarifying their narratives in their own head by enunciating opinions or agendas and seeing how others react to them. In his book 12 Rules for Life Dr. Jordan B. Peterson says, "Much of what we consider healthy mental function is the result of our ability to use the reactions of others to keep our complex selves functional. We outsource the problem of our sanity."[11] If you can assist others in ordering their thoughts and making a good clean statement of their agenda, you will be viewed as a valued friend and confidant. One way to accomplish this is via the practice of "steelmanning."

 

When you and another person have opposing or conflicting agendas, you both have a natural tendency to "strawman" each other's agenda, that is, to dismiss, minimize, or generally represent the other's ideas as illegitimate. The opposite practice is to "steelman" your opponent: That is, to work with them to develop their argument to its strongest form. This helps them to refine and clarify their own narrative in their own head, it reassures them that you're giving them a fair hearing, and it compels you to treat their ideas fairly and account for them honestly when you present your own counter-argument.

 

An argument or debate conducted via "steelmanning" may not result in agreement, but it should allow both parties to express their agendas with the assurance that they'll get a fair hearing. Just try to keep the conversation light and respect the other person's boundaries and right to their own agenda; and enforce your own boundaries and your right to a separate agenda in turn.

 

Summing up

We’re guided by narratives, personas, and agendas. If we’re passive, those things come from outside ourselves--from family, friends, acquaintances, social conditioning, etc. On the other hand if we’re proactive, we survey the landscape around us, see where and how we can truly be effective, and develop our own personas and agendas based on our needs and strengths.

 

When dealing with others, be honest and clear about your own agenda, give the other person's agenda a fair hearing, acknowledge that he might have some legitimate points, and then agree to disagree. Social conversation doesn't always result in agreement, but it can still be respectful and allow for the courteous airing of differences of opinion. And who knows: If the exchange is thoughtful and fair, maybe the two of you can find some points of commonality.

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Link: Return to Sensing (S)

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~Posted March 11, 2026