In business, you relate to the role — not the person.

This sounds obvious, but it's one of the hardest things for people to internalize. Your CEO might be 24 years old. You might be 50, with decades more life experience, more wisdom, more capability in a dozen different domains. None of that matters in the scope of the workplace. In that sandbox, the roles define the hierarchy — and the hierarchy needs to be respected for anything to function.

That's not an excuse for bad management. But it's a thing worth sitting with if you want to be successful at work: it is very easy to conflate other realms of who you are into the one where you're operating.

I'll never forget a sociological study done on Disney parks, maybe fifteen or twenty years ago. The researchers found that the social hierarchy among employees was entirely determined by the roles they played — not who they were outside the gates. The janitors, the mascots, the ride operators — each had their rank. But the princesses? They sat at the top of the food chain.

It didn't matter if one of those princesses, outside the park, wasn't exactly headed to Harvard. It didn't matter if a janitor was. Inside the scope of that workplace, the roles defined the order. And the order was respected.

the harder version of this

The Disney example is easy to see from the outside. Here's the harder one: you went to Harvard, got your PhD from Stanford, and your CEO is a high school dropout.

Something in you bristles. Some sense of I've earned more than this creeps in. And in a different scope — an academic one, maybe — that feeling might be justified. But you're not in that scope. You're in this one. And in this one, the hierarchy is what it is.

Careful not to let the outside worlds bleed in. That sense of entitlement, however subtle, will show up in how you collaborate, how you take feedback, how you show up as a teammate. It muddies everything.

everybody has their own journey

I say this as part of my own learning. There are colleagues I work with who are younger than me but further ahead in their career. Different paths, different timelines. I have to remind myself that just because someone traveled a different road doesn't mean they're not fit to lead.

Skill issues are a separate concern — I'm not talking about incompetence. I'm talking about the instinct to let who someone is outside the role color how you relate to them inside it.

The broader point is simple: respect the hierarchy within the scope of the sandbox. The roles are the roles. Relate to those, and you'll be a far better teammate than the person who can't stop thinking about who everyone is when they leave the building.