About

Whole Wide Work is about learning a new way to experience your self in your workplace. Wherever you may toil, in these pages you’ll discover how to engage the full spectrum of everything you have to offer as a person:  intellectually, physically and emotionally.

For reasons I can appreciate at first blush, we’ve been taught to hide many parts of our humanity from colleagues, a lesson that causes perpetual problems. When you feel constricted as an employee, limited in your ability to express who you are, you devote significant energy to maintaining a shield between you and your work environment, energy better spent solving task-related problems.

Yet when you feel free to bring all of your self, including the complexities of your gender, race, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and physical ability, for example, you’re more engaged and productive, and the organization in which you work succeeds alongside you. The prospect of discarding the cloaks you wear is exciting!

I’m a training and development consultant, and formally trained as a career counselor. I have a Master of Education in counseling psychology and a Master of Arts in organizational psychology. I help employees thrive in organizations, which often involves making links between their work experience and their internal world. My own connection to the subject starts with being gay and coming out at work, yet there’s more to the way I “arrive” at my job. Keep reading the blog to know more about me…

So let’s explore together. I think you might discover aspects of human life about which you’ve always been curious, and perhaps a little wary of pondering, until now.

-Haig Chahinian
[email protected]
May 12, 2010