Many standard functions become shapeshifter-like when they require bridging across teams, interests, or cultures. Many people find themselves holding a role that requires them to ‘shapeshift’, even if this is only part of the role. We list them here because, for all of them, our competency framework is relevant!

From observation and interviews, we observe this overlap in three main types of roles

1. Roles coordinating across organisational lines

People responsible for ‘cross-functional’ projects and programs with responsibility to deliver ‘something’ which requires significant input from people who do not directly report to them, sometimes from people in very distant branches of the org. chart. They’re the closest to career shapeshifters. We find them particularly in:

• Product – coordinating across engineering, design, customer, and commercial. Any person responsible for a program or project that crosses reporting lines is in a de facto similar position: this is the case for many people in schools, hospitals, and other complex organisations running cross-functional initiatives.
• Data & Business Analysis – translating between technical truth and organisational decision-making, sitting somewhere between engineers and business.
• Change & transformation – holding a responsibility to look after the whole, as the organisation goes through a measure of change. Anticipate the ripples and consequences.

2. Roles mediating up and down the hierarchy

People responsible for coordinating delivery, or otherwise mediating between a team ‘on the ground’ and an executive layer who make decisions on the basis of reports and spreadsheets have some ‘shapeshifting’ to do. They need to translate languages and mental models, adapt between different realities, while holding a measure of uncertainty and emotional burden.

If we took it one step further, we might even say that most managerial role have an element of ‘shapeshifting’: the more dynamic, human-oriented, personalised and unpredictable or rapidly changing the environment, the more shapeshifting happens. We find this mainly in:

• Middle Management — absorbing tensions between executives and frontline staff, integrating competing realities, keeping the system emotionally stable.
• Program Management — navigating shifting conditions, aligning stakeholders, adjusting in real time. Noting that this role also involves coordinating across functions and with the outside world.
• HR – mediating between the messy human reality of the people on the ground, and the organisational logic, adapting, listening. This also requires hearing the outside world of regulations.

3. Roles mediating between the organisation & the outside world

Shapeshifting is also required from people who find themselves somehow ‘in-between’ different organisational contexts, and therefore must also make an effort at translating, testing for misunderstandings, and holding the associated emotions. We find them in:

• Business development and Sales – bridging the organisation and its potential clients, managing cultural differences and conflicting interests.
• Client relations and partnerships – holding an ongoing relationship with a critical external party, this is a key diplomatic role, ensuring that the language is translated. Often, this requires navigating conflicts between the clients and the organisation’s interests.