If I Had Known… That I Was More Than a Job Title

Pierre is a senior executive at an international bank. An expatriate for more than twenty years, he has built his entire career abroad, climbing the ladder promotion after promotion until he reached prestigious positions.

With just a few months to go before retirement, his successor has been announced. On paper, this should be a happy transition. After a remarkable career, Pierre will finally have time for himself, return to France, devote himself to his family, and enjoy everything he has put off for years.

But that is not quite how he sees it.

When he contacts me for transition coaching, I meet a man who is profoundly unsettled. Behind his questions about life after work lie deep sadness, a loss of bearings, and, above all, a question of identity.

One day he says to me:

“When I go back to France, I won’t be the director of …  anymore. I’ll just be Pierre.”

Just Pierre. Those two words struck me.

As though without his title, responsibilities, status, and the recognition that came with them, there would be very little of him left.

For more than twenty years, Pierre has been identified with his role—and has identified himself with it. His professional status has shaped his daily life, his relationships, his environment, and gradually the way he sees himself.

And suddenly, all of that is about to disappear.

What Pierre is experiencing is not simply retirement. It is the end of an identity built over decades.

I see this difficulty in some of the executives I coach. They have spent much of their lives building careers, overcoming challenges, and achieving goals. But sometimes they have devoted far less time to asking who they are outside work.

For long-term expatriates, this can be even more pronounced. Between professional responsibilities, travel, moves between countries, and the demands of an international career, little room may remain for anything else. Hobbies are postponed, friendships form and dissolve with each posting, and personal life gradually comes to revolve around work.

Until the day that career ends.

Who am I when I no longer have a professional title? When my phone stops ringing? When no one is waiting for me to make a decision?

Pierre had spent years building an international career. Now he needed to learn to build a life that no longer revolved around it.

Our coaching work involved exploring what this new chapter might look like. Rediscovering hobbies, finding new interests, and imagining projects through which he could continue sharing his experience: mentoring, teaching at a business school, supporting young professionals.

After all, retirement does not necessarily mean giving up all professional activity. It can also be an opportunity to choose freely how to put your skills and experience at the service of others.

But another dimension proved just as important: his relationship with his wife.

Throughout those years, she had accompanied him on his international career journey, sometimes at the expense of her own professional aspirations. Together they had navigated relocations, adjustments, and fresh starts. Yet their life as a couple had also been organized around Pierre’s professional demands.

Now the question was no longer simply what he would do with his time, but what they wanted to build together.

Without turning our sessions into couples therapy, coaching allowed us to address an essential question: how can a couple rediscover their place together when work no longer dictates the rhythm of life?

Because retirement changes more than our relationship with work. It can also disrupt our personal balance, friendships, and the way we share everyday life with those around us.

When you devote so much time and energy to building your professional identity, you may eventually forget that it is only one part of what defines you.

And when that career ends, what remains?

Perhaps this is precisely the opportunity to ask questions you have long postponed. What inspires you beyond your work? What would you like to discover, pass on, or share? And above all, what place do you now want to give to the people who matter in your life?

In the end, perhaps being “just Pierre” was far more than he had imagined.

And what if the same were true for you?

Also in this series: “Being someone’s wife…”