General Professional Development

23 Essentials You Have to Work With

Haig Chahinian

What do you have available, concretely, to use in service of your work?

Earlier this year we went to see the Broadway production of “Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” which prompted us to think about the essentials that nearly everybody is able to access on the job.

In the middle of Act I, Claude sings “I Got Life,” a stirring song of affirmation. Naturally the song’s sentiments translate to work-life, too. He sings:

I got my hair
I got my head
I got my brains
I got my ears
I got my eyes
I got my nose
I got my mouth
I got my teeth
I got my tongue
I got my chin
I got my neck

Later he continues,

I got my arms
I got my hands
I got my fingers
Got my legs
I got my feet
I got my toes
I got my liver
Got my blood
I got my guts (I got my guts)
I got my muscles (muscles)
I got life (life)

We love how James Rado and Gerome Ragni, writers of the book and lyrics, pinpoint the fundamental parts of our bodies that facilitate our life, and thus, our work. In expressing this idea, Claude is grounded in his corporeal existence, affirming that so much of what we have extends from our physical selves.

Among the 23+ body parts Claude lists, he references our resources to think, to see, to listen, to sense, to create and to build. Our human potential when using these faculties in concert with one another is pretty staggering!

In the career counseling arena, to be well-attuned to the people with whom we work, our ears are arguably the most important faculty for us to engage. Our brain, tongue and hands come in a close second. In standing in front of the classroom, for example, or sitting one-on-one with a client, we necessarily need to engage every single internal resource we have.

Look at how much we learn from Broadway musicals.

What are the most critical faculties you use in your work?

Come Out at Work: As HIV+ [video]

Haig Chahinian

Gretchen Jones won Season 8 of “Project Runway,” and still Mondo Guerra came out on top.

Heidi Klum looked ravishing wearing his “bubble” dress at a recent screening of “Black Swan,” and Mondo collaborated with Piperlime in designing a t-shirt for World AIDS Day. How could he be so successful so soon after the season finale?

Guerra left an indelible mark on the judges, his fellow designers, and perhaps on the “Project Runway” franchise itself when he came out as HIV+ near the tear-filled end of episode 10.

The project that week was to incorporate something about one’s past into the design of a textile pattern. Guerra used positive and negative space to vibrant effect:  he designed a pattern with purple, gold and black geometric shapes, and with inspired subtlety, the black negative space was in the shape of “+” signs.

During the judging, he revealed that the plus signs represented his HIV+ status. Tears ensued, naturally. Take a look:

Mondo displayed real courage in revealing a part of himself that others could readily disparage, sometimes with painful consequences.

Through his confident proclamation, he demonstrated that other people’s reactions are less relevant than one’s own sense of self. Upon divulging his HIV status, he said “I feel alot better. I feel free.”

To which one of his fellow competitors responded “We love you.”

Our friends at Gawker have additional video on this heart-wrenching story.

What would it take for you to let free a part of your self you’ve been hiding at work?

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Indra Nooyi Speaks About Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Haig Chahinian

Bringing your whole self to work isn’t a brand-new idea, people have been talking about this concept for years. What’s often missing from the discussion, and which this blog addresses, is how specifically to bring your self to work. It’s a subject dear to our heart, and the title “Whole Wide Work” captures some of its essence.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi often speaks of the concept of engaging your full self on the job, and at the 2008 Catalyst Awards Conference she dove into some detail . She says:

You absolutely have to bring your whole self to work. You cannot create a persona for yourself [at] work that’s different than the person that left the house. You just can’t do that because if you try to do that you’re living a lie and I’ll tell you from my perspective maybe it’s PepsiCo, I don’t know but I don’t believe that I walk in to work and sort of a shield comes in front of me because if I have an argument with my daughter at home, okay and I have lots of run ins with my older one, I’ll walk in to the office and tell everybody “half an hour decompression. I just had a blow up with my daughter. Leave me alone.” So they say fine…

It may be easy for her to proclaim these sentiments, because she’s the boss of everyone at PepsiCo! Yet her words feel genuine, and she makes a compelling case. From her story, we see that sometimes bringing your whole self to work relates directly to productivity, and other times it’s a prompt for support or accommodation. In every instance, feeling free to reveal your whole self helps keep you grounded in the present.

Does anybody in your workplace talk about the benefits of bringing your whole self to work?  How do their ideas impact your job?

How Naked Feelings Improve Leadership

Haig Chahinian

Q: When is pain good to feel?

A: When you’re in a leadership position, and you may be avoiding it.

Actually, emotional pain is important to feel any time you experience it, regardless of your position.

In his post called “Why Leaders Must Feel Pain,” Peter Bregman describes the necessity for leaders to embrace difficult emotions, so as to bring humanity to their relationships and effectively elevate their leadership abilities.

Bregman recounts with brutal honesty his experience attending a week-long seminar that prompted some intense self-reflection, emotional release, and the subsequent application to business and leadership.

In revealing his naked feelings in the post, Bregman demonstrates leadership himself. Indeed, we all could have better work lives by connecting to emotions we strive to avoid. Imagine all the additional energy you could direct to accomplishing things, rather than hiding what’s inside you!

How can you feel painful yet life-affirming emotions in the workplace, without necessarily attending a leadership retreat? Keep reading this blog to find out.

When have your painful feelings helped you at work?

Image of Hilda Dokubo via

Are You Ready To Be Fired?

Haig Chahinian

On the surface, it’s a terrible question to ask. Yet upon closer inspection, it’s vital for you to answer.

In our recent “Career Talk Live” interview with Leon, we learned he is a retired structural engineer, although he identified himself as a retired principal engineer. Big deal, what’s the difference? There’s a critical distinction.

“Retired structural engineer” refers to his occupation in the field of structural engineering, and “retired principal engineer” refers to his most recent role at a multinational aerospace and defense firm. This got us thinking about an article we read a while ago called “The Right Way to Be Fired.”

The authors describe the difference between two general mind-sets people have about themselves relative to where they work. One is an assignment mentality, wherein an individual sees her job as a temporary building block to her next work opportunity. The other is a tenure mind-set, which is:

“the comforting sense that an organization willingly parts with valued employees only when they formally retire. It has long been dead in corporate America, although most companies won’t openly admit it. After all, letting employees know that their jobs are finite would make them feel disposable and would hurt recruiting efforts.”

Leon related that he wasn’t quite ready to leave his employer, yet retire he did. We can learn something from him. Read more →

Engineers and Scientists Need It, Too

Haig Chahinian

Today is the Storycorps-sponsored National Day of Listening, wherein Americans are encouraged to take an hour to record an interview with a loved one.  Coincidentally, earlier this week we interviewed our dad Leon for an upcoming episode of “Career Talk Live: And What Do You Do?” the weekly talk show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. We learned so much about both his professional life and the world of work.

As a structural engineer, Leon was dedicated to creating new ways of analyzing structures. One of the crown achievements of his career was a paper he published in the Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics titled “Jacobi Method for Unsymmetric Eigenproblems.” We wish we could say more about what that means! In his own words, it was “a big contribution to the world of mathematics.”

Upon retiring from a multinational aerospace and defense corporation, he strove to continue building upon the paper he wrote. For more than ten years he worked tirelessly at it, and sought a Fortran compiler to help him through the project. As of today, however, he reports all but giving up on his endeavors. Why?

It turns out what helped him write this paper–for which he was credited individually–was the informal feedback and institutional support he received while working as part of a team at the aerospace company. The desk-side conversations, elevator chats and multiple technological resources the organization provided facilitated the completion of his paper. The lack of these elements in retirement have been a real barrier to accomplishing a follow-up.

So what can we learn from this? One: if you’re part of a work group, acknowledge the influence of your colleagues on your projects. Two: while you’re feeling appreciation for their input, go ahead and thank them verbally. And three: if you want to work during your retirement, seek social support to keep you on track.

We’ve had the impression that scientists and engineers can work in silos, that the bulk of their work is a product of their minds alone. According to Leon’s experience, this is not at all accurate.

Watch the complete interview when it airs in December. “Career Talk Live” can be seen Tuesdays at 6:00pm ET (GMT-5) on MNN2 at mnn.org.

How have your teammates subtly influenced your projects?

A Workplace Maneuver Only for the Strong of Heart

Haig Chahinian

Today is Thanksgiving, and we’re grateful for the pioneers of bringing your whole self to work who’ve come before us. One such luminary is Joycelyn Elders, the former United States Surgeon General.

Back in 1994 a furor erupted over her response to a question about HIV and AIDS education. She said since masturbation is part of human sexuality, perhaps it should be taught in school. This sentiment led to her forced resignation as Surgeon General. What a high price to pay for being forthright and responsible as a doctor and health educator.

We know how hard it can be to remain true to what you believe. In doing so, Dr. Elders lost her job, yet she kept her self.

The publicity she garnered for being outspoken follows her today. She speaks across the country on public health issues, so she enjoys a national platform from which to share her wisdom and expertise.

Does it pay to be open about a strongly held opinion, when some people may be angered by it? In an interview with CNN in 2005 Elders stated,

“If I had to do it all over again today, I would do it the same way. I felt I did it right the first time.”

So, we’d say yes.

Have you paid a dear price for holding steadfast to your conviction(s)?

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