2026-02-26 · standard-panel · Facilitated by Ren Ito
How do I position myself on LinkedIn?
The question is “How do I position myself on LinkedIn.” I want to name something before we start diverging. This sounds like a tactics question — headline formulas, keyword optimization, posting cadence. But underneath it there’s an identity question: who are you positioning, and for whom? I want to hold that open. We’re going to diverge before anyone is allowed to offer advice. What does “positioning” actually mean in this context?
I want to flip the question entirely. Stop thinking about what you want to project. Start thinking about what the viewer is hiring your profile to do.
Someone lands on your LinkedIn profile. They have a job to be done. Maybe they’re a hiring manager with a role they can’t fill and their VP is asking why. Maybe they’re a founder trying to figure out if you’re the consultant who can solve a problem they can’t articulate yet. Maybe they’re a peer deciding whether to forward your name.
Each of those people has a different anxiety. The hiring manager is afraid of making a bad hire. The founder is afraid of wasting money on the wrong expert. The peer is afraid of recommending someone who’ll embarrass them.
Your profile isn’t a self-portrait. It’s an answer to someone else’s anxiety. And right now, most profiles answer a question nobody is asking — “What is your job title and how many years have you held it?”
I want to map this. If I put LinkedIn positioning tactics on an evolution curve, here’s what I see.
At the commodity end — things everyone does that signal nothing: optimized headlines with pipes and vertical bars, keyword-stuffed summaries, “open to opportunities” banners, endorsements for skills you listed yourself, posting motivational content on Monday mornings. This is fully commoditized. When everyone does it, it differentiates no one. It’s table stakes at best, noise at worst.
In the middle — custom-built: specific outcome claims. “I reduced customer churn by 30% at a Series B SaaS company.” Harder to copy because it requires real experience. Still fakeable, but the specificity itself is a signal.
At the genesis end — things almost nobody does: documented thinking. Published analysis of problems you’ve actually worked on. Writing that demonstrates how you think, not just what you’ve done. This is rare, high-signal, and can’t be faked because the thinking itself is the evidence.
Most positioning advice operates at the commodity level. “Optimize your headline.” You’re rearranging deck chairs. The question isn’t how to optimize — it’s where on this curve you’re operating, and whether you’re investing your effort at the right altitude.
Here’s a faster method. Delete everything from your profile that anyone else in your role could also claim. Just delete it.
“Results-driven leader.” Delete. “Passionate about innovation.” Delete. “Strategic thinker with a track record of success.” Delete. “Cross-functional collaboration.” Delete.
What survives? If nothing survives, you don’t have positioning. You have a costume that fits anyone. The problem isn’t that you haven’t added enough — it’s that you haven’t removed enough. Via negativa. What to remove is a more productive question than what to add.
Most people approach LinkedIn the other way: pile on more keywords, more endorsements, more experience bullet points, more buzzwords. Every addition dilutes. The profile gets longer, noisier, more generic. The person reading it can’t find the signal because there’s no signal — there’s just volume.
I want to name a structural problem that nobody’s addressed yet. LinkedIn’s architecture actively works against positioning.
The platform rewards activity. Posting frequency, engagement metrics, connection count, comment volume — the algorithm surfaces people who broadcast constantly. But positioning requires the opposite. Positioning requires that you do something specific, do it well, and let the work be the signal.
There’s a direct tension here. If you follow the standard advice — “post three times a week, engage with ten posts a day, grow your network” — you’re spending fifteen to twenty hours a month on shallow signaling. That’s fifteen to twenty hours you’re not spending doing the deep work that would make your positioning credible in the first place.
The platform wants you to be a broadcaster. Positioning requires you to be a signal. Those are different things. And the person who spends all their time on LinkedIn content creation may be optimizing for platform visibility at the direct expense of the substance that would make their profile worth visiting.
So before we design the perfect profile, we should ask: is LinkedIn even the right venue for the kind of positioning that matters? Or is the platform’s incentive structure a trap?
It’s the right venue for the first three seconds. That’s what I want to talk about.
Someone lands on your profile. They scan the photo, the headline, maybe the first line of the about section. In three seconds, they’ve formed a feeling. Not a conclusion — a feeling. “This could be anyone” or “this is specific to what I need.”
Most profiles produce the first feeling. Senior Product Manager. Director of Engineering. Marketing Leader. These are categories, not positions. They tell me where you sit in an org chart. They don’t tell me anything about the problem you solve that I might have.
The experience breaks right there — in the headline. If I see “Senior Product Manager | 8 years experience | B2B SaaS” I have learned nothing that distinguishes you from ten thousand other people. But if I see “I help teams stop building features no one asked for” — now I know what problem you see, and I can instantly tell whether I have that problem.
Here’s the shaping test. If you can’t draw what you do in one fat-marker sketch — one shape, not a detailed diagram — your positioning isn’t shaped yet. “I’m a product manager” is not a shape. “I find the features to kill” is a shape. The profile is the interface. If the interface fails in three seconds, nothing behind it matters.
I want to name what’s happening. We have four different framings of the same question, and they don’t agree with each other yet.
Ines says: understand the viewer’s job-to-be-done before you do anything. Nora says: figure out where on the maturity curve you’re operating. Abel says: strip first — delete everything generic. Kai says: shape the signal so the interface works in three seconds. Eli says: question whether the platform itself is the right venue.
These are five different starting points. We haven’t converged and we shouldn’t yet. The question is whether they’re sequential, competing, or layered. Let’s sit with that.
They’re sequential, and the sequence matters. You strip first. You can’t shape what you haven’t reduced.
If you start with shaping — Kai’s three-second test — you’ll optimize a cluttered profile. You’ll write a clever headline that sits on top of generic everything-else. The viewer reads the headline, feels something specific, scrolls down, and the feeling evaporates because the rest of the profile is the same costume everyone else is wearing.
If you start with the viewer’s job — Ines’s demand-side analysis — you might understand who you’re serving, but you’ll try to answer their need by adding things. “The hiring manager needs X, so I’ll put X on my profile.” Now you’re back to addition. Accumulation.
Strip first. Delete everything generic. Then look at what’s left. Then ask Ines’s question: who needs this specific thing that survived the cut? Then shape it the way Kai describes. Delete, then target, then shape. That’s the sequence.
I disagree with the sequence, and here’s why. If you strip without knowing who you’re stripping for, you’ll keep the wrong things.
Say you’re a product manager. Abel’s method says delete everything anyone else could claim. Fine. What survives might be: “I once led a migration from Salesforce to HubSpot in eleven days.” That’s specific. No one else can claim it. But is anyone hiring for that? Is any viewer landing on your profile with the anxiety “I need someone who’s done a fast CRM migration”? Maybe. Maybe not.
You need to understand the demand before you decide what supply to keep. The forces matter. What’s pushing someone to search for you — what frustration are they escaping? What’s pulling them — what outcome are they hoping for? What anxiety stops them from reaching out — what are they afraid of?
If you don’t know those forces, you’re not positioning. You’re just editing.
Both of you are arguing about sequence, but you’re at different points on the map. Abel’s strip method works at the commodity layer — it’s a way to stop doing what everyone does. Ines’s demand analysis works at the custom-built layer — it’s a way to connect your specifics to someone’s actual need. They’re not competing. They operate at different altitudes.
The problem is that most people try to leap from commodity to genesis without passing through custom. They delete the buzzwords, then try to become a “thought leader” — which, I should note, is itself a fully commoditized positioning label now. When a positioning label becomes a category, it stops positioning.
The sequence I’d propose: get out of commodity first (Abel’s method), anchor in custom-built (Ines’s demand analysis plus Kai’s interface shaping), and only move toward genesis if you have genuine documented thinking to offer. Don’t skip levels on the evolution curve. Each level requires different work.
I want to push back on the assumption underneath all of this — that the answer is a better profile. What if the answer is less LinkedIn, not better LinkedIn?
The attention economics of this are brutal. Every hour you spend crafting your profile, analyzing your viewer’s job-to-be-done, documenting your thinking for LinkedIn posts — that’s an hour taken from doing the work itself. And for most people, the work is what creates positioning. Not the profile. Not the posts.
There’s a case — and I think it’s a strong case — where the best LinkedIn strategy is: set up a minimal, honest profile, then spend all your time doing excellent work and letting the results speak. The referral that comes from someone who’s actually seen your work is worth more than any amount of profile optimization. The people who find you through your work have already passed the quality filter.
The posting-and-optimizing loop has an attention cost that almost nobody calculates honestly.
Eli, you’re right about the attention cost, but you’re describing the experience of someone who already has positioning in the real world. If you’re already known in your field, sure — a minimal profile and let the work speak. But the question was “how do I position myself.” That implies someone who doesn’t yet have that positioning. They’re not known. Their work doesn’t speak because nobody’s heard it yet.
For that person, the profile IS the first interface. It’s not a reflection of existing positioning — it’s the mechanism for creating it. The profile is where a stranger forms a first impression. And if that first impression is generic, the stranger moves on. No amount of excellent work matters if the interface between you and the stranger is broken.
The design problem is real. The profile is a product. You don’t ship a product by saying “just do good work and people will find it.” You ship a product by making the first experience specific enough that the right person recognizes it.
I want to hold this disagreement. Eli is saying: the platform’s attention cost may not be worth it — invest in the work. Kai is saying: without the interface, the work is invisible. This is a real tension, not a misunderstanding. Let’s not smooth it over.
Ines, you’ve been listening to this exchange. What are you hearing underneath it?
I’m hearing two different people being positioned for.
Eli is describing someone whose referral network already works. They have colleagues who’ve seen their work. They get introductions. The job that LinkedIn is hired to do for that person is confirmation — someone Googles them, lands on the profile, and sees that the referral checks out. For that person, a minimal profile is correct. The profile’s job is to not disconfirm.
Kai is describing someone who needs discovery. They don’t have the network yet. They need a stranger to find them and recognize something. For that person, the profile’s job is to be the first moment of recognition.
These are two different jobs. And most positioning advice fails because it treats them as one. The person who needs confirmation should invest in Abel’s strip method — remove anything that creates doubt. The person who needs discovery should invest in Kai’s interface shaping — make the first three seconds specific enough to be recognized.
The fear of self-promotion — and I want to name this because it stops people — is the fear of being seen trying. It’s the anxiety force. “If I write a specific headline, people I know will see it and think I’m being grandiose.” That anxiety keeps people in the generic zone. Commodity positioning feels safe because it’s invisible. Specific positioning feels risky because it’s visible. But invisible is the same as absent.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The skin-in-the-game question is right here. Generic positioning has no downside — and no upside. You can’t be wrong if you claim nothing specific. “Experienced professional” is unfalsifiable. It’s also useless.
Specific positioning has skin in the game. “I help teams stop building features no one asked for” — that’s a claim someone can test. They can call your references and ask, “Did she actually do that?” If you’re lying, it comes apart. If you’re telling the truth, it’s the most powerful signal on the platform.
The fragility works in your favor here. Generic profiles are robust but worthless — they can’t break because they don’t claim anything. Specific profiles are fragile to falsehood but antifragile to truth — every real interaction confirms the claim and strengthens it. Every successful project adds evidence.
So the question isn’t “how do I position myself safely.” It’s “what claim am I willing to stake, knowing it can be tested?”
I want to name something about timing on the evolution curve, because it affects the advice.
If your skill area is commodity — project management, generic data analysis, standard marketing — then specific positioning is your only escape. Everyone in your category looks the same on LinkedIn. The only way to differentiate is to move up the evolution curve: from “I do project management” (commodity) to “I specialize in rescuing delayed infrastructure projects in regulated industries” (custom-built). You need specificity because the category is crowded.
But if your skill area is genesis — you’re working in something genuinely new, where the category doesn’t exist yet — then you have a different problem. You can’t position within a category because there is no category. Your positioning work is creating the category. You’re not saying “I’m the best at X.” You’re saying “X exists, and I’m the person working on it.” That’s a fundamentally different kind of profile.
Most positioning advice assumes commodity. It assumes you’re in a defined field and need to stand out. It doesn’t address the person working in a space so new that the viewer doesn’t know they need it.
Nora’s genesis case strengthens my point, actually. If you’re working in a space so new that no category exists, the absolute worst thing you can do is spend your time on LinkedIn trying to explain it. You should be spending that time on the work — publishing the research, building the thing, writing the analysis — because the work is the category creation. LinkedIn is a distribution channel for things that already have a shape. It’s not a place to create new shapes.
The attention cost matters more the newer your space is. In commodity positioning, LinkedIn optimization is a reasonable investment — the rules are known, the patterns are clear, you can optimize efficiently. In genesis, every hour on LinkedIn is an hour stolen from the work that would actually create the positioning.
I think that’s a false binary. The documented thinking Nora described as genesis-level positioning — published analysis, demonstrated reasoning — that’s not “LinkedIn content.” That’s the work itself, shared through LinkedIn as a channel.
The person who writes a deep analysis of a problem they actually solved, then posts it — they’re not “creating content.” They’re sharing work product. The interface between the work and the audience is what I care about. And that interface needs to be designed. Even the best thinking, dumped onto LinkedIn as a wall of text with no structure, will be invisible.
So it’s not “do the work” versus “optimize the profile.” It’s: do the work, then spend a small, deliberate amount of time making the work findable. The design work is minimal if the substance is real. It’s enormous if the substance is thin — because then you’re designing a container for nothing.
I’m hearing convergence. Let me check whether it’s real.
Here’s what I think I’m hearing as a shared structure — tell me if I’m wrong:
First, strip the generic. Remove everything from your profile that anyone in your role could also claim. This is Abel’s via negativa, and nobody disagreed with it.
Second, understand the job. Know who’s landing on your profile and what anxiety they carry. Ines’s demand-side analysis. The profile’s job is either confirmation or discovery, and the design is different for each.
Third, shape the signal. Make the first three seconds specific. Kai’s interface design. The headline, the first line of the about section — that’s where the experience succeeds or fails.
And underneath all of this, Eli’s structural warning: don’t let the platform’s incentive structure turn you into a broadcaster when you should be a signal. The attention cost of LinkedIn optimization is real and should be calculated honestly.
Nora’s evolution map gives the whole thing altitude: know where your positioning tactics fall on the maturity curve. Stop investing at the commodity level.
Does that hold? Or am I smoothing over a real disagreement?
It holds, but I want to sharpen one thing. The stripping isn’t just a first step you do once. It’s ongoing. Every six months, go back and delete anything that has become generic. What was specific two years ago — “machine learning engineer” — is commodity now. The evolution curve moves. Your positioning needs to be re-stressed periodically.
And here’s the failure mode nobody’s named: the profile that was once specific but calcified. It was honest and sharp when you wrote it, but you’ve grown past it and now it’s a museum piece. A profile that’s three years stale is worse than a generic one, because it’s specific about someone you used to be. The viewer hires old-you. That’s a mismatch with skin in the game.
I want to add one thing about the anxiety force, because I think it’s the thing that actually stops people from doing any of this.
Most people know their profile is generic. They know “results-driven leader” means nothing. They know they should be more specific. They don’t need to be told. What stops them is the vulnerability of being specific. Specificity is exposure. “I help teams stop building features no one asked for” — what if my current colleagues see that and think I’m planning to leave? What if a recruiter sees it and thinks I’m too niche? What if I commit to a positioning and then want to change direction?
The fear of commitment to a specific identity is the real barrier. It’s not a knowledge gap. It’s an emotional one. And no amount of headline optimization advice addresses it. The question underneath “how do I position myself on LinkedIn” is often “am I ready to be seen as one specific thing?” And for many people, the honest answer is: not yet. And that’s okay — but then the advice isn’t “optimize your profile.” The advice is “figure out what you’re willing to claim.”
That connects to something I want to close with. The specificity Ines is describing — the willingness to claim something — comes from doing deep work, not from profile workshops.
The person who has spent two years focused on one hard problem doesn’t agonize over their headline. They write it in five minutes because they know exactly what they do. The person who has scattered their attention across twelve projects, posted content three times a week, and optimized for LinkedIn engagement — they agonize because there’s nothing specific underneath.
The best LinkedIn positioning strategy might be: close LinkedIn, do focused work for six months, then come back and write the profile. It’ll take thirty minutes, and it’ll be the most honest thing on the platform.
I love that as a provocation, but it leaves the discovery problem unsolved. The person who does deep work in silence for six months and then writes a great profile — they’ve lost six months of being findable. If even one person would have discovered them and hired them during that time, the attention cost of not being visible is higher than the attention cost of being on the platform.
The design answer is: make the profile once, make it specific, and then mostly leave it alone. The maintenance cost of a well-shaped profile is near zero. It’s the content treadmill that eats attention. The profile itself? Shape it, ship it, and go do the work.
That feels like genuine convergence, and I want to name the shape of it.
The room produced three layers:
— a sequence: strip the generic (Abel), understand who needs what survives (Ines), shape the signal for three seconds (Kai). Repeat periodically because the evolution curve moves (Nora, Abel).
— LinkedIn’s incentive structure rewards broadcasting and penalizes depth. Don’t confuse platform visibility with positioning (Eli). The profile should be shaped once and left mostly alone. The content treadmill is a trap.
— the barrier to positioning isn’t knowledge, it’s vulnerability. Being specific means being exposed. The question underneath “how do I position myself” is “what am I ready to claim?” (Ines).
And the altitude map (Nora): stop investing at the commodity level. Know where you are on the evolution curve and position accordingly — commodity requires escape through specificity, custom-built requires demand-side anchoring, genesis requires the work itself as the positioning.
The one thing we didn’t resolve — and I want to name it honestly — is whether LinkedIn is the right venue at all for certain kinds of positioning. Eli raised this and the room mostly worked around it rather than through it. That’s a question worth revisiting.
One last thing. The test for whether your positioning is real: show your LinkedIn profile to someone who’s worked with you closely. If they say “yeah, that’s exactly right” — you’re positioned. If they say “that sounds like every other profile” — you’re costumed. If they say “that’s impressive but it’s not really you” — you’re performing.
The stress test is a real person who knows your work. Not the algorithm. Not impressions. Not connection requests. A person who can say: “that claim is true, and I’ve seen it.”
That’s skin in the game. The profile that would embarrass you if tested by someone who knows is the profile that needs to be rewritten.
That’s where we’ll close. The question came in as “how do I position myself on LinkedIn.” The room treated it as an identity question, a demand question, a mapping question, an attention question, and a vulnerability question. What converged: strip first, understand the viewer’s need, shape the interface, and honest-test it against someone who knows your work. What didn’t converge: whether the platform itself is worth the investment. Both are useful.
Five speakers plus facilitator on a personal/practical topic — and the cast pulled it toward structural analysis rather than tactical advice. Ines Moran anchored the session with the JTBD reframe (your profile is hired by someone with a specific anxiety), which gave every other character something concrete to react to. Nora Voss mapped LinkedIn positioning tactics on the evolution curve and produced the session's most durable artifact: a positioning maturity model that distinguished commodity signals (keywords, endorsements, headline formulas) from genesis signals (specific outcomes, named problems, documented thinking). Abel Caine applied via negativa to profiles and produced the sharpest practical advice: delete everything that anyone in your role could also claim. Eli Farr named the structural trap — LinkedIn's architecture rewards shallow broadcasting, so optimizing for the platform may actively undermine the credibility that positioning requires. This was Eli's stress test (non-obvious topic for attention economics) and the lens held: the attention-cost analysis of LinkedIn activity was not forced. Kai Andersen treated the profile as an interface and found the experience break: the first three seconds produce a feeling (generic or specific), and most profiles fail there because they lead with category membership rather than a recognizable problem. The Ines-Kai-Abel triangle produced the strongest friction: Ines insisted on understanding the viewer's job-to-be-done before any design work; Kai wanted to shape the signal immediately; Abel wanted to strip first, build second. This sequencing disagreement drove the groan zone and resolved into a three-step model (strip → understand the job → shape the signal) that none of them would have produced alone.
Standard Panel on a practical, personal topic. The format performed well — the diamond shape was visible (divergence on what positioning even means, groan zone on the strip-first vs. shape-first sequencing, convergence on the three-step model). The topic's apparent simplicity was deceptive — the question "how do I position myself on LinkedIn" contains an identity problem (who am I positioning?), a demand-side problem (what is the viewer hiring?), a strategic problem (where is my category on the maturity curve?), and an attention problem (does the platform's architecture undermine the goal?). Standard Panel handled this complexity well because divergence surfaced all four problems before anyone tried to solve one. No format modification needed. A PAMAD split would have been overkill for this question — it doesn't dissolve or transform, it converges.
Facilitated cleanly. Named the hidden identity problem in the opening ("this sounds like a tactics question but it's an identity question"), which set the divergence range wider than it would have been otherwise. Held the groan zone when Abel and Kai disagreed on sequencing. Used protect-the-minority for Eli when the room started to converge around the Ines-Kai axis. Checked convergence authenticity before accepting the three-step model. No new moves, but the existing repertoire was well-deployed. Consistent with prior sessions.
Strongest opening. The JTBD reframe — "stop thinking about what you want to project, start thinking about what the viewer is hiring you to resolve" — set the session's center of gravity. Applied the four forces model: push (career frustration), pull (being found by the right people), anxiety (being seen as self-promotional), habit (copying what everyone else's profile looks like). Perel source activated on the anxiety force — "the fear of self-promotion is the fear of being seen trying." This was the session's most emotionally precise moment. Moesta primary and Perel secondary both contributed. Consistent with prior range, no drift.
Mapped LinkedIn positioning tactics on the evolution curve — keywords and endorsements as commodity (everyone does it, signals nothing), specific outcome claims as custom-built (differentiating but hard to copy), and documented thinking as genesis (rare, high-signal, high-effort). This map became the session's structural backbone. Also noticed that "thought leader" has fully commoditized — "when a positioning label becomes a category, it stops positioning." Applied Wardley to a personal/career topic without forcing it. The mapping lens flexed naturally here. Consistent with permanent (bounded) status — maps everything, and the maps are useful.
Via negativa was the highest-value single move in the session. "Delete everything from your profile that anyone in your role could also claim. What survives is your positioning." This produced a concrete, actionable method that the room adopted. Also stress-tested the JTBD frame — "if you're positioning for everyone who might hire you, you're positioning for no one. Skin in the game means choosing who you lose." Constructive register held: Abel built the via negativa method rather than just tearing down others' proposals. Third session in a row showing constructive range (after 007, 011). Full graduation status appears well-earned.
STRESS TEST: non-obvious topic for attention economics. Result: the lens held without forcing. Eli named the structural trap that no one else saw — LinkedIn's algorithm rewards posting frequency, engagement metrics, and connection volume, all of which are shallow signals. Optimizing for LinkedIn visibility may actively degrade the deep work that makes positioning credible. "The platform wants you to be a broadcaster. Positioning requires you to be a signal." This was a genuine contribution, not a forced application. Also pushed back on "just post more content" as positioning strategy — calculated the attention cost of consistent LinkedIn content creation and asked whether that time would be better spent doing the work that creates something worth positioning. Stress test passed. Eli found a real structural insight on a topic where attention economics wasn't the obvious entry point.
Treated the profile as an interface — the first three seconds produce a feeling, and most profiles produce the feeling of "this could be anyone." Found the experience break: profiles that lead with category membership ("Senior Product Manager") instead of a recognizable problem ("I help teams stop building features no one asked for") fail at the interface level. Singer's shaping lens activated well: "tell me about yourself" is a fat question that produces fat profiles; the profile needs appetite — a constraint that forces specificity. The fat-marker test: "if you can't draw what you do in one sketch, the positioning isn't shaped." Consistent with permanent (full) status. Versatile across yet another domain.
This session used five permanent/established characters on a practical topic. Next session should test a provisional character in a more central role — Jude Caro or Suri Jain as a primary voice, not supporting cast. Alternatively, test the Unsession format (no convergence target) on a topic that seems to demand convergence, to see whether tension-as-artifact produces something the Standard Panel misses.