When Urgency Is No Longer Your Identity

“If I don’t respond fast, I feel like I’m losing control.”

“When my agenda is full, I feel useful.”

“It’s easier to fix something now than to stop and explain how it should be done.”

“I’d rather do something than sit and think too much.”

“If I’m not involved in everything, it feels like I’m no longer performing.”

These are just five phrases I’ve caught in coaching sessions with project managers. Do they feel familiar to you?

What these managers had in common was a genuine desire to discern better between what is important and what is merely priority-shaped by urgency. Not because they were overwhelmed or disorganised, but because they were starting to sense that speed alone was no longer producing clarity.

They are all highly capable people. People who deliver. People others rely on when things get tight. When something stalls, they step in. When uncertainty appears, they move. This is not accidental behaviour. It is learned competence.

For them, urgency functioned as a system: one that responds quickly, absorbs risk, and keeps things moving. It is responsibility and ownership expressed through speed. A way of working that reassures others, and often reassures the person carrying it, that things are under control.

That way of working earned trust. It built a reputation. It made them effective when others hesitated.

And over time, urgency stopped being just a way of operating. It slowly became a way of defining who they are at work.

However, when urgency becomes identity, it doesn’t disappear when it no longer serves. It stays even when the role has already changed.

Urgency once deserved your loyalty.

It is important to say this clearly. It was not a flaw. It was a strength shaped by context.

Early in your individual contributor role, and often for many years after, speed was the right answer. Decisions were close to you, dependencies were clearer, and execution needed constant protection. Being autonomous and fast meant being reliable. People read your involvement as commitment. Acting quickly meant caring.

Urgency allowed you to learn faster than others. It gave you visibility. It built trust upward and sideways. It created a sense of usefulness that was concrete and immediate. When things moved, you knew you mattered.

This way of working came from ownership. From standards. From a genuine desire to deliver well in complex conditions. And because it worked for so long, it earned your loyalty.

The problem is not that you continued to rely on urgency. The problem is that as you moved into project management - or other forms of management - the role itself shifted, requiring a different kind of response, while your default rhythm stayed exactly where it was.

The role changed before the rhythm did.

As a manager, your work gradually stopped being mainly about executing, fixing, accelerating, or unblocking. It shifted toward holding decisions that don’t resolve faster simply because you move quickly.

The system around you expanded. Problems became less technical and more relational, more interdependent, more ambiguous. In this context, speed no longer reliably reduces risk. Quite often, it increases it.

And yet, urgency is a convincing rhythm. It feels responsible and productive. Most importantly, it feels familiar.

So you kept responding fast. You stayed involved across multiple fronts. You filled your agenda and moved before thinking too long — not out of carelessness, but because pausing began to feel unfamiliar, even unsafe.

What changed wasn’t your competence. What changed was the type of value your role started to require.

And without fully noticing, you began compensating for that gap by treating almost everything as urgent, pushing harder on the very rhythm that had once made you effective.

Urgency slowly becomes a costly form of protection.

Has it ever crossed your mind that urgency might be protecting you?
Not from work, but from exposure.

As long as everything is urgent, there is little space to sit with strategic questions that have no immediate answers. Questions about competing priorities. About conflicting stakeholders. About decisions that will inevitably disappoint someone. About boundaries that must be set and actively held.

This is management.

Yet this part of the role is still unfamiliar enough to feel unsafe. So it gets postponed. And in its place, doing becomes a rational justification, a productive-looking substitute for staying with decisions that require position, not speed.

Doing something feels safer than staying still with uncertainty. Fixing feels easier than explaining. Being involved everywhere feels more comfortable than trusting others to struggle (and possibly fail) without you stepping in.

Urgency shields you from the discomfort of no longer being needed in the same way.

This is not avoidance in the obvious sense. It is a refined, respectable version of it. One that still delivers results. One that looks like commitment. One that rarely gets questioned, including by you.

Over time, however, this protection comes at a cost. Most managers only notice urgency as a problem when exhaustion appears. Still, the real cost shows up much earlier.

Clarity begins to erode. The line between what is important and what is merely pressing becomes blurred. Everything asks for attention. Everything feels necessary. And because you can handle it, you do.

Gradually, something subtle shifts. Your authority starts relying more on activity than on position. On responsiveness rather than on judgment. On movement rather than on conscious choice.

You remain effective. But less free.

You are not trapped, but urgency no longer allows you to see yourself clearly outside of it.

I usually meet with middle managers in coaching at this point. Why? Many have already received sufficient input from their manager about having “to solve” their discernment on urgency, and some are already aware and convinced about it.

Leadership without urgency feels strangely empty at first.

When urgency loosens its grip, what appears is not relief. It is space. And space can feel uncomfortable.

There is less noise. Fewer immediate wins. Fewer signals that confirm you are useful. Decisions take longer: not because of hesitation, but because they require discernment, not speed.

At this point, I often see managers trying to re-create urgency. To fill the space again. To return to what feels productive.

But this space is not a problem to be solved. It is the threshold of a different kind of authority. One that does not come from being everywhere. One that does not need constant proof.

This is where identity quietly comes into question.

If urgency is no longer what defines you, something deeper is asked.

Not how fast you move. Not how much you do. But from where you choose.

The transition is not (only) operational. It is inside you. It is about trusting that your value no longer depends on constant intervention, and that performance does not disappear when speed steps back.

So the question that remains is not about efficiency or prioritisation.

It is this:

Who are you in your role when urgency is no longer your identity?

And are you willing to let that answer emerge without rushing to fill the silence again?

How can I support you?

The Manager Mindset - One-on-one coaching designed to boost your performance and enhance your sense of fulfilment and satisfaction in life.

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Growth Mindset for New Managers - Your online autonomy training is designed to catalyse your personal growth and ensure your fast transition to your first management role.

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