by Cody Hodge

Created on: November 12, 2009

So you walked into work today, and your boss asks you to come into his office. Uh oh, what happened? The first thing you might be thinking is that something bad happened to someone else, or the guy who watches the department at night screwed up again. However, the boss quickly indicates that he needs to talk to you about an issue that has to do with something you have been doing. For whatever reason, there is going to be a change, and you are going to be losing a job title.

Before you start to flip out, you have to take stock of the situation. Did you really need that job title, or did you really want that job title to begin with? Was the title of Head of Night Operations really something that you enjoyed having? Perhaps it was just a title that was given to you in the past to keep you with the company, or maybe it was a motivational ploy.

Titles can mean nothing, and those without titles can still have incredible authority. Perhaps you were just in a situation where you had the title temporarily while something was going on in the company. Maybe you were the strategic streamline manager, and your job was to make sure that the computer systems were set up for the start of the new year. Is that something you are going to lose sleep over?

If you have lost a significant job title, and your authority might be undermined, it might be time to panic. If you were the head of Human Resources, and now you are just a part of HR, it can be unnerving. Unless it was part of a larger change in the company, you might want to ask about why you are being dropped from that title. If it is a performance issue, they should say so, and if not, you have nothing to worry about.

Losing your job title doesn't mean that you lose your authority. Instead of having a night manager role, maybe it just got merged with another position, and you are just sharing the role with someone else. It doesn't mean you are going to lose your power, it just means you might not be the only one with that power.

Job titles tend to be something we give ourselves for ego or other reasons, and they don't mean much. The real power on the job comes to those we respect, and that have the most experience. Job titles are mostly political if anything, and are just there to give people some peace of mind. Otherwise, they mean nothing, and losing one shouldn't always cause you to panic.

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