women

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?

Image via

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 →

Come Out at Work: As a Woman [video]

Haig Chahinian

We love Iceland. Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir is the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world. Icelandair’s beautifully photographed ads on the subway transport us from the pushing crowds at rush hour. And we’ve liked Bjork since her days with The Sugarcubes. Now there’s a new heroine in the media, by the name of Halla Tomasdottir.

In the TED talk above, the founder of Audur Capital makes a number of keen observations about gender and leadership. In relating her own story:

Why would two women who were enjoying successful careers in investment banking in the corporate sector leave to found a financial services firm? Well let it suffice to say that we felt a bit overwhelmed with testosterone… in my country, much like on Wall Street and the city of London and elsewhere, men were at the helm of the game of the financial sector. And that kind of lack of diversity and sameness leads to disastrous problems.

She’s referring to the financial collapse of Iceland in 2008, the biggest of any country in economic history. Tomasdottir goes on:

So it was almost like coming out of the closet to actually talk about the fact that we were women and that we believed that we had a set of values and a way of doing business that would be more sustainable than what we had experienced until then.

It’s rarely easy to talk openly about how your gender impacts business, and the former corporate investment banker’s experience enlightens us about some of the challenges. She further explains:

The whole thing about the female trend is not about women being better than men, it is actually about women being different from men, bringing different values and different ways to the table. So what do you get? You get better decision-making. And you get less herd behavior. And both of those things hit your bottom line with very positive results.

Love her! Businesses benefit from the multiplicity of values and perspectives that a diverse group of people bring when they freely exercise their whole selves at work.

The title sounds like it may be about the plight of transitioning gender from male to female, yet we’ll explore that in a future post. We’re struck by the poignance of coming out at work with a part of one’s self that’s so readily visible, and obvious.

It’s poignant because Tomasdottir (pictured at right, on left) reveals to us the meaning of her gender relative to her work. And for being in tune with this part of her self, she’s handsomely rewarded.

Video via TED, image via