"I see a huge gap, with too many managers, between who they are and what they do", says Nurit Berman, owner of executive search company Emda, and the pioneer of headhunting in Israel. "People are terribly afraid that others would consider them failures. They tell themselves a story that protects them, but this protection is a double-edged sword, because it prevents them from learning from their failures". Paradoxically, explains Berman, it is when managers are terminated that "the most wonderful things in the world can happen", since this gives them an opportunity – so rare in the normal course of their career – to doubt their beliefs. This opportunity, and not the next job offer, should be seized. "My task is to persuade them to remain irrelevant, rather than live with a borrowed identity".
