bring your whole self to work

Come Out at Work: With Dyslexia, Part II

Haig Chahinian

We’ve covered the subject of revealing your dyslexic nature at work before, yet a book full of new supporting evidence is prompting us to get excited about it all over again. Doctors Brock L. Eide and Fernette F. Eide have written The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain (Hudson Street Press, 2011). Mm… the title basically says it.

To dive right into the good stuff, a review in Scientific American Mind relates:

[People with dyslexia] can excel at “big picture” thinking. [They] frequently prefer thinking in narrative form, a proclivity that makes them natural storytellers, and they tend to have exceptional spatial navigation skills, visualizing 3-D structures with ease.

Turns out that in addition to film and TV star Whoopi Goldberg, novelist Anne Rice, actor Danny Glover and entrepreneur Richard Branson live and work with the strengths that dyslexia brings. The Doctors Eide offer that:

It is time to stop classifying dyslexia as a learning disability and start appreciating that different brain-wiring patterns allow people to process information in unique ways. When it comes to learning, they argue, there is no good or bad, right or wrong, only a difference in style, which should be fostered rather than corrected.

Right on! The folks we’ve referenced in this post have flourished not in spite of their learning style, but because of it. Again from the Scientific American Mind article, you see:

Being dyslexic allowed them to break from conventional ways of thinking to dream of fantastic new worlds and create alternative solutions to vexing problems.

We’re not going to call dyslexia a “learning disability” again. It’s a learning difference, a learning style.

Do you have dyslexia? National Coming Out Day will soon be here. What are you waiting for?

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Fit In, Stay True to Your Self

Haig Chahinian

We were away the last few weeks, and worked to enjoy summer time with family. During our break, we really let our hair down. That is, we stopped shaving (photo near right). The feeling of a fuzzy face was fabulous.

After Labor Day it was time to go back to work, and we typically toil in buttoned-up office environments where conservative, formal appearance is valued.

Read: no beards allowed.

What were we to do? We could remain unshaven, stand firm on our freedom of self-expression, and rebel against the unwritten rules. No corporate culture would dictate how we present ourselves to the world!

Then, the night before our first day back to a hermetically-sealed high rise, we shaved. Did we give in? Worse, did we give up? Yes, and no. We gave in to the “look like the rest of us” dynamic of the places where we often conduct work, yet we did not give up.

We like to practice what we preach, and bring our full selves to work. In making the decision to fit in superficially–meaning, on the outside–we freed up the considerable energy it takes to reveal and engage the full spectrum of our internal wherewithal. Which is what we appreciate the most.

So it was a little humiliating at first to shave off the beard we were growing to love. Yet the trade-off of homogeneity on the outside for diversity on the inside is worth it. We fit in and align ourselves on the surface with people at work, so that we can be free to leverage the less common parts of our selves that truly represent who we are.

How does fitting in at work help you stay true to your self? And what are the benefits?

The Whole Wide Work Hall of Fame

Haig Chahinian

We’re loving on Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Inc., because she knows what we know about professional development. And she’s talking about bringing your whole self to work so much, we’re excited to induct her into the Whole Wide Work Hall of Fame as the inaugural member. Hats off to Ms. Sandberg!

Starting today, the Hall of Fame will distinguish prominent figures who promote the ideals of engaging your whole self at work. Think someone should be inducted? Tell us who, and we’ll investigate, with a shout out to you!

So what’s the fuss about Sandberg? We’ve been wanting to write about her since Brad Stone wrote a profile in Businessweek a short while ago. The article referenced the TED Talk from December 2010 in which she spoke about women and leadership, and still somehow we couldn’t find the hook we were seeking to feature her on WWW.

Until now. In the mid-July edition of the New Yorker, Ken Auletta wrote about her in the context of men in Silicon Valley. The way she manages her self as a worker and what she demonstrates about bringing your whole self to work is pretty brilliant. From the story:

David Fischer, Facebook’s vice-president of advertising and global operations, recounts a performance review of a female executive that he and Sandberg conducted. Fischer says that he told the executive numerous times that she wasn’t assertive enough, but he felt that she wasn’t hearing him. “Sheryl jumped in after I finished and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re feeling, but I can imagine what it might be. Let me tell you about when I was younger.’ ” She recounted her own insecurities, and, he says, “I just watched this woman go from sitting there listening to me but just hearing a bunch of business-type words. . . . It just opened up the whole conversation.”

It gets better: Read more →

How to Compete with the Machines

Haig Chahinian

Since the creation of the wheel, we’ve been in a cycle of developing technology and then competing with it for work. Yes, we use what we invent to make our tasks go more efficiently, and then we’ve needed to compete with our inventions in order to remain productive ourselves.

We’re feeling shortchanged here — wasn’t technology supposed to help us relax more?

Today the cycle of change and adaptation seems to be accelerating, so we’re increasingly being prompted to evaluate our competitive advantage as humans. A preposterous and humiliating prospect, to be sure, yet hope is not elusive. In his Op-Ed piece “The Start-Up of You,” Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times:

Something new — something that will require our kids not so much to find their next job as to invent their next job — is influencing today’s job market more than people realize.

In discussing the trends of unemployment, and the need to access the full extent of our abilities, he continues:

[Employers are] deploying more automation technologies, software, outsourcing, robotics — anything they can use to make better products with reduced head count and health care and pension liabilities. That is not going to change. And while many of them are hiring, they are increasingly picky. They are all looking for the same kind of people — people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever.

We’ve been freaking out about this idea for a while now; it’s partly what has led us to start this blog. Friedman is talking about how we need to leverage everything we have inside us to solve the significantly complex problems we face as we move into the future.

How do we tap into the universe of knowledge, skills, and abilities inside each of us?  Keep reading Whole Wide Work. As you do, you’ll learn about the specific parts of our selves that we conceal, usually to fit in at work. While we may feel accepted in the short term, hiding creates many problems for us and our colleagues in the long-term.

So to compete with the proliferation of machines around us, (subscribe to WWW, above right, and) show us who you are — warts and all. The less time you spend covering up, the more energy you’ll have to demonstrate your wonderfully human capacities.

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The Goodness of Bad Feelings at Work

Haig Chahinian

During the course of the day, many of us shy away from bad feelings. You know the ones: the day’s coasting when you see, or hear, or remember something and immediately feel embarrassed, or guilty,  or doubt-ridden. “Buck up,” and “soldier on,” you think to yourself, platitudes that fall flat.

Which is why Pooja Nath, founder of Piazza.com, didn’t recite these phrases to herself when she felt bad as a college student studying in the computer lab. Profiled recently in the New York Times, Nath’s story goes like this:

When Pooja Nath was an undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, an elite engineering school in India, she felt isolated. She was one of the few women on campus. While her male classmates collaborated on problem sets, Ms. Nath toiled in the computer lab alone.

“Back then, no one owned a laptop, there was no Internet in the dorm rooms. So everyone in my class would be working in the computer lab together,” she said. “But all the guys would be communicating with each other, getting help so fast, and I would be on the sidelines just watching.”

The experience as a young woman in that culture formed the foundation of her start-up in Silicon Valley, Piazza.

About her company, a homework help site:

Students post questions to their course page, which peers and educators can then respond to. Instructors moderate the discussion, endorse the best responses and track the popularity of questions in real time. Responses are also color-coded, so students can easily identify the instructor’s comments.

Although there are rival services, like Blackboard, an education software company, Piazza’s platform is specifically designed to speed response times. The site is supported by a system of notification alerts, and the average question on Piazza will receive an answer in 14 minutes.

You see that? Those crap feelings you sometimes experience on the job can help you find fame and fortune. The task is not to silence your emotions, but rather to tolerate them, and listen to them.

If you can do this, your bad feelings may help you make decisions about your professional path. How great is that?

One last bit that floors us: the average question on Piazza will receive an answer in 14 minutes. What does this mean? Yes, the technological infrastructure of Nath’s business is impressive.

Also, there’s an ever-increasing expectation that we are always in front of a screen. Which makes us feel scared, and anxious as we consider the prospect of being in front of a back-lit screen at all times.

We’ll tolerate these uncomfortable feelings, open to the goodness they may still bring.

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Not Just for 7 Million* Gay People

Haig Chahinian

Hooray for more research! Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Karen Sumberg of the Center for Work-Life Policy have published an article in the Harvard Business Review outlining their study on coming out at work.

They’ve found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees who reveal their sexual identity are generally more successful. From the article:

Our research suggests that many are hiding needlessly and that “out” workers may stand a better chance than closeted workers of being promoted (although there are still relatively few openly gay senior executives). This appears to be the case largely because closeted workers suffer anxiety about how colleagues and managers might judge them and expend enormous effort concealing their orientation, which leaves them less energy for actual work. Further, LGBT workers who feel forced to lie about their identity and relationships typically don’t engage in collegial banter about such things as weekend activities—banter that forges important workplace bonds.

What good news! That we already knew.

Now let’s do an exercise. For a moment, let’s not only consider the LGBT population; let’s think about everybody at work. Nearly everyone at work struggles in some way to be fully open about who they are. So we’re going to substitute “humanity” for “orientation” in the paragraph above, and omit the terms “gay” and “LGBT.”

So once more, this time thinking about all people:

Our research suggests that many are hiding needlessly and that “out” workers may stand a better chance than closeted workers of being promoted (although there are still relatively few openly gay senior executives). This appears to be the case largely because closeted workers suffer anxiety about how colleagues and managers might judge them and expend enormous effort concealing their orientation humanity, which leaves them less energy for actual work. Further, LGBT workers who feel forced to lie about their identity and relationships typically don’t engage in collegial banter about such things as weekend activities—banter that forges important workplace bonds.

Mostly works, right? Regardless of what specifically you may be striving to conceal about your self, it’s increasingly evident that hiding is detrimental to your career. Seven (7) million* gay people can’t be the only ones to benefit from coming out at work. Clearly there’s opportunity for everybody!

If you’re wondering what parts of your self can be liberated on the job, look no further.

We love how this research supports the broad viability of bringing your whole self to work.

So what are you waiting for? What would you love to reveal about your self at work, that you haven’t already?

* Estimated number of LGBT employees in the U.S. private sector

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When is it OK to Change Your Mind? [video]

Haig Chahinian

Let’s get right to the answer: always. It’s always OK to change your mind at work, as long as you remain thoughtful and emotionally grounded in your decisions.

Case in point: New York State Senator Mark Grisanti (R-North Buffalo) who spoke on Friday during the Marriage Equality Act floor debate. Said Grisanti:

I have never in the past four months researched an issue or met with so many people and groups on a single issue such as this.  I have struggled with this immensely, I can tell you that.  I have read numerous documents, independent studies, talked with a lot of people on both sides of this issue.

As a Catholic I was raised to believe that marriage was between a man and a woman.  I’m not here however as a senator who is just Catholic.  I’m also here with a background as an attorney, through which I look at things and I apply reason.

I know that with this decision, many people who voted for me will question my integrity a short time ago.  I tell you though that I have studied this issue.  For those that know me, they know that I have struggled with it.

To those whose support I may lose, please know that in the past what I was telling you, and what I believed at that time was the truth.  But by doing the research and ultimately doing what I believe to be the right thing, to me shows integrity.

I would not respect myself if I didn’t do the research, have an open mind and make a decision  — an informed decision — based on the information before me.  A man can be wiser today than yesterday, but there’ll be no respect for that man if he has failed in his duty to do the work.

I cannot legally come up with an argument against same-sex marriage.  Who am I to say that someone does not have the same rights that I have with my wife who I love, or that have the 1300-plus rights that I share with her?

We admire the way he openly works the various parts of him self: Catholic, senator, attorney, man and husband. And in addition to the signing of the glorious bill into law, the result of his actions include Governor Mario Cuomo’s accolades. The New York governor referred to Senator Grisanti as “people of courage and people of principle.”

To be sure, in exploring the act of changing your mind, we don’t mean reacting impulsively, or not remaining true to what you believe (*cough* CindyMcCain). We’re talking about the necessarily introspective re-consideration of an idea or belief.

Watch Senator Grisanti’s whole, yet brief, speech.

What have you experienced when you’ve changed your mind at work?

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