career development

Come Out at Work: With Your Biggest Insecurity [video]

Haig Chahinian

Picture it: your biggest insecurity hides in the closet, sitting comfortably out of view. You prefer it this way, yet secretly you wonder what it would feel like if the world knew your inner pain. Then one day, BAM, you let it out at work.

This is exactly what Cassandra Bankson did recently, on the Internet, no less. The self-described model and YouTube guru produced a video in which she appears without makeup; points out the acne on her face, neck, chest and back; then completes her morning makeup routine on screen. The before and after shots are pretty incredible, demonstrating the power of creatively applied foundation.

“Well, showing off comes easy to a model,” we thought. And we were wrong. Bankson acknowledges at the beginning of the video:

Taking my makeup off is one of the most insecure things I could probably do.

Then once it’s all off, she confides, “I feel really disgusting,” and our hearts break for her!

Why does she do it?

We can see many reasons. One, the bulk of what she broadcasts on YouTube is make-up instructional videos, so by coming out she educates the public on how to use makeup to manage acne. Two, by coming forth with something as personal as blemished skin and the insecure feelings it brings, Bankson opens up her inner world, which attracts viewership. And three, in terms of business, the more exposure she has as a model, the more potential for modeling contracts.

About 4 million views (and counting) later, an appearance on Good Morning America, and increased confidence to continue revealing herself without makeup, she seems to be doing better than ever.

You, too, can benefit from revealing your biggest insecurity at work. Drawing people to you helps your professional development, since relationships are resources. And the more resources you have, the better off you are.

As with revealing any part of your inner life, it takes a lot of strength to come out with your biggest insecurity. Going by the looks of things, it’s worth it.

Watch Cassandra Bankson’s reveal below:

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Top 10 Tips for Switching Careers [video]

Haig Chahinian

You know these techniques have to do with revealing your whole self at work, the question is:  how?

We look to the career path of Dr. Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a genetics research center established to help scientists work collaboratively, and whose mission includes discovering the molecular basis of major human diseases. He started out as a math genius, and–good for him–wanted more.

Recently highlighted in the New York Times, Dr. Lander’s work history can serve as a guide on how to find more fulfillment by switching your career track. From his story we gather these top 10 tips for switching careers:

1. Disrespect convention. If you’re working to transform something — be it a whole discipline, or your individual career — traditional norms may get in your way. Dr. Lander relates why the Broad Institute is interdisciplinary at its core:

We used to have these boundaries of the chemistry department in the chemistry building, and the biology department in the biology building, the math department, the computer science department. Young scientists today… have no respect for these boundaries, and they shouldn’t. They just munge it together… people are now exploring the fusion cuisine that comes out across all these different disciplines.

2. Leverage your frustrations. Author Gina Kolata writes:

“I began to appreciate that the career of mathematics is rather monastic,” Dr. Lander said. “Even though mathematics was beautiful and I loved it, I wasn’t a very good monk.” He craved a more social environment, more interactions.

3. Identify all your talents, then use them.

“I found an old professor of mine and said, ‘What can I do that makes some use of my talents?’ ” He ended up at Harvard Business School, teaching managerial economics.

4. Embrace your naivete. So many of us try to hide our inexperience; Lander knows better:

Read more →

Challenges to Engaging Your Whole Self at Work

Haig Chahinian

A friend of ours, “Karisma,” last month attended a two-day course on lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) issues in the workplace, and left with her head spinning. What happened may surprise you.

She’s a counselor in a New York City high school, and two colleagues attended the learning program with her. We connected when she was somewhat distressed shortly after the seminar; the primary issue, in her words, was:

I tried to ‘come out’ at work during a two day training and it was a disaster for me. Internally I felt so upset I cried all the way to the ferry, obviously not a good look. I’m better now than I was, but I am still thinking about Monday and my re-entry to work.

Like many people, Karisma has preferred to separate aspects of her work life from her personal life, so the struggle to reveal her self to her coworkers is real. Still, by thinking hard about her actions and feelings in the context of her job, she’s well equipped to reap the rewards of revealing and engaging her whole self at work. Let’s look at how the events unfolded.

Karisma relates how the opening go-around began: Read more →

Sisters Doing It for Themselves (Brothers Are, Too) [video]

Haig Chahinian

The foundation of our civilization is shifting. Feel it?  NEW New York City, or Non-traditional Employment for Women in NYC, is paving the way (couldn’t help it) towards ground-breaking (stop us!) change in the limits we all place around professional development.  Check out the organization’s mission:

Founded in 1978, NEW is a sector-based workforce development program that prepares women for careers in the construction, transportation, energy, and facilities maintenance industries. NEW focuses on skilled, unionized jobs in the trades with starting wages averaging $15 per hour, benefits, and a path to higher-wage employment.

Totally hot! Not only is the promise of career advancement exciting, this is an organization that clearly encourages every member to bring her whole self to work. In the construction field, we’re talking about revealing and engaging the full extent of your strength, stamina and dexterity, plus so much more.

Now women aren’t the only ones pursuing less traditional occupations. There’s an increasing number of men taking up the role of C.E.O. support system, also known as “husband of the C.E.O.”  From the New York Times story on the men who support women C.E.O.s:

Asked at a Barnard College conference what men could do to help advance women’s leadership, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the landmark “Men and Women of the Corporation,” answered, “The laundry.”

When women and men eagerly take on non-traditional pursuits, we all benefit. These pioneers demonstrate the hard-won fulfillment and freedom that can come with eschewing the trappings of gender.

Watch the stories of some of New York City’s strongest:

This video almost brings tears to our eyes. It’s a shining example of bringing your whole self to work, for sure.

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Harmful Images of Executive Leadership

Haig Chahinian

Imagine an executive at work.

Who did you picture? Perhaps a White, physically capable, probably straight, man? If you did, it’s not totally your fault.  In part because there’s an image of one to the right.

As consumers of media, we’re regularly fed subtle and powerful messages of what executive leadership looks like.  Bill Keller (right), former executive editor of the New York Times, was recently referenced in the New Yorker as follows:

With his square jaw, neatly parted gray hair, dark suit, and pocket kerchief, Keller on this day could have passed for what his father was, the chairman and C.E.O. of Chevron.

With this physical description, he’s a natural ringer for a chief executive of a global corporation making several billion dollars in annual profits, including last year?

The picture of Keller immediately continues, with a rub:

Yet when he stepped to the microphone his voice quavered, and he occasionally paused to restrain tears.

His bone structure, fine hair, and formal dress could link Keller to the role of multinational chief executive, yet he cried, so no behemoth conglomerate chairmanship for him!

The additional message suggests that powerful executive men don’t express tender emotions.

These ideas reach us in a place under the conscious level, and they sometimes come from an unconscious place in the writer. Is the New Yorker writer Ken Auletta aware of his myopic view of executive leadership?

This description of Keller comprises just a few sentences within a 10,000 word essay, so it’s easy to miss the underlying implications. It’s one of numerous written messages we take in regarding who’s fit for leadership in our society.

We get this message delivered in pictures, too.

One example: Read more →

Poetry + Football = Recipe for Success

Haig Chahinian

Brandon M. Graham is an educator and author of A Love Supreme: Amputated Feelings & Prosthetic Apologies (Brownstone Publishing, Inc., 2005), as well as the forthcoming collection of poetry entitled Conciliation: Medicine for Melancholy (Brownstone Publishing, Inc. 2011).

He’s also a friend; once upon a time we team taught a professional development course at New School University.

We chatted online recently, and discussed the career path that has led him to become the published poet he is today. Our conversation took twists and turns, uncovering references to Russian literature, growing up with ministers, and wetting himself while writing.

The full interview follows, with very minor edits:

Haig Chahinian:  When you were 12, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Brandon M. Graham:  I remember wanting to be both a professional athlete and a writer of some sort. I wasn’t too versed in genre, but I know I loved playing sport and writing in my journal.

HC:  What kind of athlete? And that’s quite a mix! Did you share this with anyone at that time?

Graham:  As a kid I played organized football, basketball, and track. My parents and coaches have always been really encouraging. I think I had a natural aptitude for playing football. I idolized players like Walter Payton and Jerry Rice. Also, I did share it with my teachers, coaches, and classmates. I wasn’t necessarily ashamed about wanting to be a writer and surely I wasn’t ashamed of wanting to be a professional athlete. I think those thoughts of anxiety toward keeping a journal and writing crept in when I began high school.

HC:  In professional football, what did you want in that line of work? Fame? To crush other ballplayers? Fortune? The poetry of a perfect spiral viewed by millions? And what did writing in your journal feel like to you? It seems like you felt something significant, because you thought about pursuing writing professionally. (And tell me to slow down if we’re going too fast.)

Graham:  That’s funny you would use that language because really early on I found the poetry and symmetry in sport. I had always been a running back when I played football. I noticed the kind of choreography of a football play. You have eleven men going up against eleven other men–and that can both violent and exhilarating. However, the overwhelming feeling I walked away from each play was just how amazed I was that we were all in sync. So I really enjoyed teamwork and collaboration with others on the field. The fame and money and all that comes with being a professional athlete was all secondary. (OK, forgive if I’m typing too slow. I’ll do my best to keep up, but just be a little patient with me and we’re all good man. This is cool.)

HC:  So you were a thinker from an early age.  Both of these avenues — professional sports and professional writing — are hard to find success in!  What happened in high school, where I hear you say anxiety crept in? How did that happen? For example, was it completely internal? Or perhaps there were external forces at play? Read more →

Come Out at Work: With Breast Cancer [video]

Haig Chahinian

If you were diagnosed with breast cancer, how would you raise the issue at work? It’s a painful scenario to imagine, and yet it’s something thousands of cancer survivors have done, including two prominent television journalists.

Linda Hurtado, a health reporter for WTFS in Tampa Bay, Florida, in a recent newscast tearfully announced she had breast cancer and would undergo a bilateral mastectomy to prevent its spread. On the air she poignantly grappled with bridging her personal journey with her professional work. She said:

I was diagnosed with breast cancer about two weeks ago… I’ve struggled since then with what I should say to all of you… How much to share, if I should share anything at all… And now I’m going to be gone for a while. I’m the health reporter, it’s breast cancer awareness month, and over the last 17 years I’ve asked so many of you to share your truth with me, so I can’t just disappear for a while without sharing mine with you.

She comes out in part to align her life with what she espouses in her work as a health reporter, and in part to deal with the practicality of her subsequent temporary absence.

In 2007, Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts also came out at work with breast cancer. She shaved her hair on television so the world could witness the loss that can accompany the disease.  In the video below, she relates:

When you’re first diagnosed, one of the first thoughts is about…the side effects of chemotherapy. And the one side effect that comes to mind, just like that, is one of the most visible:  loss of hair.

There’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not like I’m trying to fool people by wearing the wig, because in the line of work that we are in, we don’t want to be distracting people from our story and what we’re talking about.

Roberts works openly with the public nature of her job in our lookist society. See the moving video for yourself:

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Roberts and Hurtado are brave to reveal themselves so nakedly, and in doing so they help educate millions of people about the early detection and treatment of breast cancer. Even more important, they serve themselves by coming forth with their truth, and thus from a situation that weakens some physical capacity, they derive strength.

In fact, Robin Roberts’ video diary sent droves of viewers to ABCNews.com, a boon for the network.

So coming out at work can clearly be a win-win-win prospect for the world at large, your organization, and you.

Have you come out at work with breast cancer? How did you manage the experience?

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