Coming out with multiple sclerosis must be a harrowing process, and coming out with it at work has to be even more distressing. Cathy John relates the complexities of coming out with MS, and explores some of the issues specifically related to coming out at work with the condition.
She explains:
…A poll reveals 74 per cent of the public believe MS is fatal… Such misperceptions make a pretty good reason to be tight-lipped – anticipated death is not so hot for your career. Fear of the disease eclipsing their professional reputations and making it difficult to be promoted or recruited, makes people hide their MS for as long as possible. This often then forces people to come out when their condition is rapidly deteriorating, reinforcing negative misconceptions about MS’s aggression. Yet even if employers do have a reasonable understanding of MS they might shy away from a candidate who needs modifications to be made to the workplace, time off sick due to relapses or treatment, and whose fatigue may force them to eventually work part-time.
The Independent article has more insight on this patient’s story about managing the slow onset of MS.
How has multiple sclerosis impacted you in your workplace?
We teach a course on how to leverage LinkedIn for research and marketing purposes in the job search, and one of our favorite parts of the program is the discussion on posting to your profile the books you’ve read. Participants often fear what their reading preferences may reveal about them, and to their detriment they tend to omit these details.
Yet accessing the Reading List by Amazon app and clicking on the books you’ve read — or simply want to read — is an elegant way of expressing who you are, without using many words. And that’s a key to communicating online: using as few words as possible.
We’ve recently read the books depicted above. Which ones will we link amidst our work experience and education on LinkedIn? Let’s think about this.
What you read reveals so much about your interests, your dreams, and how you think. Interestingly, David Rakoff discusses how we judge people based on their reading material in this month’s GQ. If you’ve read, say, Lips Unsealed by Belinda Carlisle, what meaning can viewers of your profile project onto you? At the very least:
1. You read, and thus you can concentrate
Reading books may be a dying pastime, and that you can read tens of pages on one subject indicates your ability to focus your attention for stretches at a time.
2. As one who reads, you know how to manage stress
Have you ever seen a person stressed-out and reading a book? We once saw a guy read a book, listen to his iPod, and walk to the train probably while chewing gum, yet he’s an exception. The memoir of a pop artist necessarily is pleasure reading, so when you reference that you’ve read this book, you tell everyone you know how to relax.
3. You’re curious about the world
Reading is a process of digesting ideas and information related to our world. Your pursuit of knowledge demonstrates your wish to know more about the universe.
These are 3 marketable attributes about you, so go ahead and talk about the books you read. You will attract some people to you, and you may repel some folks by your reading choices as well. Those whom you attract will be drawn to something within you, which can be the basis for a formidable relationship. And strong relationships go hand-in-hand with your professional development.
So which books will we be posting on our LinkedIn? All of them, natch.
What does your reading list say about you? Add your comments below.
Despite what Columbia Business School students are hearing, dressing down at work can be a boon to your career. In the words of Eric Schadt, former executive scientific director of research genetics for Rosetta Inpharmatics:
“What I have to do every day is push super hard on the thinking front and on the doing front,” he says. “It’s much easier to push and think hard if you don’t have to think about other things that don’t matter so much.”
It prompts us to evaluate how we spend our energy in preparation for our work day, and how comfort in the workplace relates to hard work, or in Schadt’s case, super hard work.
How comfortable is he on the job? According to The Scientist he owns about 30 identical white polo shirts and 10 pairs of identical khaki shorts, and wears this combination with white socks and Birkenstocks. Read the full story here.
Wearing shorts to work has indeed been lucrative for Schadt. The organization he helped build was sold to Merck for $620M in 2001.
Columbia students would be impressed.
Shout-out to our friend Piro who initially told us about his friend Eric.
Camille Paglia (love her! sometimes!) writes in the New York Times about the perils of de-sexing ourselves, including in the workplace. For good measure, she throws in issues related to class, race, and gender. Her piece brings to mind Debrahlee Lorenzana’s plight, located at the opposite end of the sexy spectrum.
Consider Paglia’s analysis of the white-collar workplace:
In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation.
With all of its complications, it’s clear that we must bring sexy back to work, in service of our professional role and the function of the organization where we toil. The question is, how? And without getting into trouble!
A bit of a trick question, for those who’ve bookmarked the previous blog name “It’s Everybody’s Business.”
The “Ask the White Guy” column at Diversity Inc. answers the question thoughtfully, and many of the comments feel spot-on.
To wit, from the article:
Promotions, especially to senior management, require a great deal of mutual trust—something that is impossible to develop if you’re forced to hide such a fundamental part of who you are.
Dr. Pauline Park has an impressive professional history. Among many accomplishments, she co-founded the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and the Queens Pride House, a center for the LGBT communities of Queens. She’s a trangendered Korean adoptee, and we’d say 100% American. Dr. Park’s path illustrates the way she has integrated into her career some salient facets of her identity.
This story has legs — last week’s Village Voice featured Elizabeth Dwoskin’s cover story “Too Hot for Citibank?” about Debrahlee Lorenzana, a strikingly attractive young woman who claims to have been fired from the financial services firm for being too sexy. Since the story’s initial publication, the New York Post, Gawker and The Early Show (whose video is embedded above) have joined the discussion, and yesterday in The New York TimesMaureen Dowd weighed in on how beauty can impact individuals in society.
Within all the chatter, however, a key question has yet to be asked: how can we work with our sexuality–rather than against it–in business?
According to Lorenzana’s story, it seems her physical appeal may have helped her build business. The Voice reports that in April 2003 the Municipal Credit Union named her “sales rep of the month;” in November 2003 the Metropolitan Hospital in Queens recognized her for “providing world-class customer service;” and in August 2006 she earned a Customer Higher Standards Award at the Bank of America.
At Citibank, she “went out every day and looked for business…then clients would come into the branch asking for her.” Yet in the office, ultimately her sexual energy was killed, as she was removed from the organization along with any potential new clients.
As human beings, we hold the spectrum of humanity within ourselves, and this includes sex. As a career counselor, I’m interested in how this aspect of our selves manifests in the workplace.
The complexities of Debrahlee’s story are difficult to acknowledge, since they hit on a number of hot-button identity issues. Dwoskin writes:
Lorenzana [is] five-foot-six and 125 pounds, with soft eyes and flawless bronze skin, she is J.Lo curves meets Jessica Simpson rack… [Her] mother is Puerto Rican and father is Italian [and she] came to New York from Puerto Rico 12 years ago. She was 21 and pregnant, and had a degree as an emergency medical technician from a technical college in Manati, a small city…
While the racial or ethnic identity of her colleagues is not referenced, it seems that we’re talking about working–or in this case, avoiding working–across differences of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status and gender.
It’s imperative for us to talk about how these dimensions of our identity come into play on the job, so that we don’t act on them unwittingly, and more important, so we can leverage all parts of ourselves to help solve the increasingly complex problems we face in 2010.
Lorenzana’s story contrasts with that of Danica Patrick, although there are significant similarities, to be explored in another post. As well, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will influence how human sexuality impacts the world of work — also to be explored in an upcoming post.
What do you think about how we access and leverage our sexuality at work?
