If you’ve been in the business world for any length of time, you’ve probably heard someone talking about “putting on my __ hat”. It’s helpful phrasing to signal that you’re taking a certain perspective on a discussion. Someone might say, “putting on my manager hat, we need to get this done in two weeks, but putting on my engineer hat that’ll create all kinds of risks.”

That’s not exactly what I’m writing about here. But it’s not completely different either.

There’s a phrase that I use, inside my head, literally “putting on the hat” or “time to ‘put on the hat'”. It means to set aside my natural preferences and become a character or inhabit a role that people around me need.

A few years ago, I went to overnight camp for the very first time. I went as a counselor, not as a camper. Every summer, my church puts on a 4-day, 3-night camp for kids in the elementary grades. The kids are divided up into cabins or “bunks”. Each bunk is assigned a color or a pattern. Everyone gets bandanas in that color, and it’s common to refer to “red bunk” or “tie-dye bunk”. I was assigned as the senior counselor of “camo bunk”¹.

I am fairly prone to sunburn². Four days of outdoor fun sounded like a risk. I own a couple of baseball caps, but I wanted (1) a bit more 360° protection and (2) I wanted a camouflage hat to match my bunk color. I found myself a nice wide-brimmed camouflage bucket hat.

At camp, there are times that counselors get to relax. There are counselor meetings. Camper free time isn’t completely relaxed for the counselors, but it’s certainly less focused. Chapel time at least keeps everyone corralled. Then there are times counselors need to bring energy and guidance. Getting to places (like the dining hall!) on time. Focusing on team challenges. Getting from the bathhouse where we brushed our teeth, past the outdoor games area, and successfully into our cabin for sleep.

During the times counselors get to relax, I often found myself naturally not wearing my hat. Counselor meetings and chapel are indoors, so the hat wasn’t needed. Boys like to spend free time swimming, which is not an activity normally associated with hat wearing. But when I needed to be “on”, I often had my hat on. In fact, when chapel was over, I found myself putting my hat on and clicking into energetic, ready-to-go counselor mode³.

Around the same time⁴, my wife joined the “Family Experience (FX)”⁵ team at our church. I tagged along, expecting I could be useful as a stagehand or some other behind-the-scenes role. As the team met and prepared for the year, one thing led to another and I ended up as one of the four skit characters⁶.

My character: Billy Bob Beaker, hillbilly scientist. Take a classic raggedy barefoot hillbilly character, add a lab coat and lab goggles, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the character’s appearance. There are two key points relevant to this essay I’ll mention. First, Billy Bob is loud, often wrong but unaware of it, instantly friendly to new people, and occasionally struggles with impulse control. In short, he behaves quite different than I normally do. Second, Billy Bob wears a straw hat⁷.

Before “showtime” for each event, we ran our pre-show checks. We checked mics, made sure props were where they needed to be, ran through the show order so that everyone involved (MCs, actors, tech team, anyone else involved with putting on the event) had the chance to ask questions, and made any last-minute adjustments. I was the one that facilitated the pre-show checks. That required being crisp, organized, and under control—things Billy Bob Beaker most definitely is not.

During pre-show checks, all of us actors wore our costumes. I usually did not wear my hat. Once we finished our checks and were as ready as we’d ever be (or ran out of time to get any more ready), the group dispersed to our places. Tech folks went to the tech booth. MCs went to chat with one eye on the clock so they could start the program. Actors either headed backstage or to greet families as they came in. Whichever direction I was headed, I put my hat on before I headed that way.

When Billy Bob’s straw hat went on, I felt a shift. I didn’t need to be responsible for the whole show anymore⁸. I just needed to play Billy Bob, support the other actors, and do my best to recover when I messed up a line or forgot a key prop⁹. When the hat went on, I clicked into character mode, no matter how well (or poorly!) prep might have gone, or what was left to be done.

“Putting on the hat”, for me, means I’m adopting the energy level, motivations, and concerns that are needed in a given situation. Inside I might be tired, worried about my lines (or wanting to support another actor that’s nervous about their lines), or just don’t want to. But the hat goes on, and I click into the mode I need to be in. Fatigue, irritation, outside things-to-do, those things don’t matter for a time.

Even though I no longer play Billy Bob (like many other things, FX stopped in March 2020), and I’m only a counselor for a few days a year, I find that I “put on the hat” regularly. I work remotely, so my family is often around during the workday. I’ll talk with family—having fun, planning for the weekend, dealing with logistical difficulties—then I’ll walk into my office, close the door, sit down, and click into manager mode¹⁰.

Obviously, I’m not the only one that switches contexts or roles. A lot of folks do that, and some of them have their own ways of making the switch easier for them. But the idea of “putting on the hat” is appealing to me because of the way the metaphor affects my thinking.

If I can “put on the hat” and become the energetic, fun counselor my cabin needs, I can also “take off the hat” at a counselor meeting or at bedtime. Instead of maintaining that level of energy and fun, I can catch my breath and start to re-energize. If I can “put on the hat” and become Billy Bob, I can also “take off the hat” at the end of the production, put any actor concerns aside, hug my kids, and help clean up¹¹. Putting on the hat—whether there’s a physical hat involved—is temporary, and that’s often helpful. The hat itself is just a reminder that it’s a temporary assignment; if the assignment is difficult or I don’t like it, at least I know it will end. And when the assignment ends, I can take off the hat.

1. Camouflage, in a pretty classic woodland green color scheme. Some years there has been a girls’ bunk assigned “pink camo”. I cannot think of an environment in which pink camo would help conceal someone. [↩]
2. Does having gotten giant blisters from sun alone count as “fairly prone”? [↩]
3. That is, as much as I am the energetic, fun, enthusiastic counselor. There are some wonderful friends I’ve made through camp that bring more fun counselor energy when completely exhausted than I do at 150%. [↩]
4. If I remember right, this was the late summer / autumn after my first time at camp. I may be remembering wrong. It was certainly within a year. Not that it matters much for the sake of this post. [↩]
5. FX was a monthly large group mid-week gathering for families with kids, ranging from littles on up, with kids usually switching to other activities around or after 5th grade. The program included skits, games, and slime. Each month was organized around teaching about a character trait. [↩]
6. Five, if you count Steve the Monkey who was actually a puppet. Only four of us characters were live-action humans though. [↩]
7. We found a battered straw hat that fit the character perfectly. It did not, however, fit my head snugly. When I’d nod vigorously (often), do big stage movements (frequently), or take off running (a lot), the hat would fly off my head. The solution we settled on was a loop of duct tape on the inside. The duct tape would stick to the hat well enough, and stick to my hair very well. It made taking off the hat much more difficult than putting it on! [↩]
8. Not to imply I was solely or primarily responsible for the whole program! I served under a great leader, with a great team. There were a lot of things I was responsible for, though, and aspects of those things covered the entire scope of the evening. [↩]
9. Oh yes. That happened. The key prop (the Macguffin, if you will) in the wrap-up to our first school-year “season” storyline. Fortunately, it was quite in character for Billy Bob to have forgotten something, and to sprint offstage to get it while all the other characters looked on, confused. [↩]
10. To be clear, I do not put on an actual physical hat when I sit down to work. [↩]
11. Yep, the very thing I’d expected to do as part of the FX team. [↩]