The importance of bringing your authentic self to work
Context
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, having a hard time putting it into words. I’ve been feeling that this past year has taught us a lot in general, and without wanting to go into another covid medium post, I will only mention that thanks to the pandemic, we’ve seen some real changes in the way ‘we express’ ourselves at work or we behave in general.
I would even argue that this is the moment for embracing being emotional, for bringing your authentic self to work, and for being an agent for change while you are on the clock.
If this pandemic has taught us anything, is that the rules from the “old” world are over, and the new normality is upon us. Now, in times of hopping from zoom call to google meetup, I’ve noticed that there are minor changes here and there that helped break a little of the seriousness that work entailed. It’s become normal to get into work calls with our pets playing in the background, or even with our families. Also, due to the increase of stress and anxiety amongst co-workers, there have been more ‘social hours’ hangouts to discuss feelings. This has opened us up to the possibility of showing ourselves more vulnerable. In addition to this, lately, gender, social and racial issues, amongst other topics have shifted towards the mainstream agenda, and this has also spread into some work discussions. According to a Deloitte study on millennials, the pandemic “has brought about an even stronger sense of individual responsibility” and we as millennials, “intend to take actions to have a positive impact on our communities”.
According to Brené Brown, we have a responsibility of bringing our whole self to work and accepting addressing sensitive subjects. She mentions that brave leaders are never silent about hard things and that we are scavengers of those unsaid things. She also speaks about the importance of being brave and vulnerable.
Also, as stated by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, co-authors of No Hard Feelings, “the office would be a much more enjoyable place if we weren’t so discouraged from feeling our feelings while on the clock”. I couldn’t agree more! I think that since I’ve been more open about who I am, what my interest are, and where my passions lie, I’ve enjoyed working so much more. They talk about how important it is to encourage open discussions and encourage the psychological safety that allows people to express themselves.
A little about me
After several years working in the design field, and carrying a variety of empathy workshops, I truly understood where my passions lied. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not like I’ve been able to always be my authentic self at work, I actually struggled at the beginning of my career to find my voice within the organizations where I worked. Having worked for more than 8 years in the tech industry, I can assure you, I wasn’t always this open.
But somewhere around the start of my thirties, something clicked in my mind. I realized I needed to combine my two passions in my work life: design and feminism. I understood that it wasn’t going to be easy, but I needed to have a better balance of my activism and my work life and try to merge them.
At first, I used to just talk about feminism outside of work, but as the world started evolving as well, it was easier for me to combine them. It started with me just asking for time off work for attending workshops, lectures, and everything gendered related. Also, since I am an experience designer, research was commonplace for me, so I started researching everything about applying a gender perspective in design, or using design methodologies to address gender issues in my community. I also participated in local chapters of organizations that worked on these topics and also began facilitating service design jams or hackathons to see how we could apply design techniques to solve day-to-day problems.
I believed that if I could use the tools that I had learned at work, to address those topics I was passionate about, I would be able to make a case for using the learning time my jobs allowed, for pursuing training in these areas, and it worked. In my mind, at first, it was hard connecting the dots on how feminism was key for me to be a better professional, but after a lot of research, I came to understand that applying a gender perspective in our day-to-day tasks could permeate a company’s culture to being more inclusive and fairer.
From going to lectures to creating workshops, and co-creating spaces to reflect on these issues, I’ve spent the last 3 years using every available free time I had to further train myself. Lately, I’ve participated with some colleagues, in a diversity and design initiative in my current work, to gather resources for training our design team on why diversity is important in our design process.
It also involved me talking during my 1:1s with my manager about why these topics were important to me, and why it was crucial at least for me, to be an agent for change during work hours too. But it wasn’t until I put myself out there and opened up to be more vulnerable, that I realised I could also be an agent for change.
Support system
Something I’ve also learned this past year is the importance of managers fostering spaces where employees can express themselves. I don’t think It would have been as easy as it was for me to exploit my interests if it wasn’t for my manager who supported me all the way and who gave me trust and space to work on diversity initiatives or attend gendered lectures/workshops. This flexibility and encouragement helped me join both of my passions, into my work life.
And why share this?
Not everyone feels empowered enough or is lucky to work in an open place where they can express their beliefs. We still live in a world that expects us to be compliant robots that just smile, but there are those who want to make a difference, and that’s why I thought I should write about my journey. I would have never imagined that feminism would take such an important role in my career and that it would make me see the world differently than it was. And also, I would have never thought that I would be able to openly discuss these topics and play a key role in initiatives to use that knowledge to empower others. Something I came to realise, is that you can be a change agent in the small actions too, like creating a reflection group with your colleagues to talk about ways to solve XYZ’s problem, to bringing awareness to issues you believe are important to society. I hope someone reads this and feels they can say something about how they want to contribute to the workplace out there and show themselves to be vulnerable in the way.
I once heard in a ted talk, “how passion becomes purpose” and in my case, it’s exactly how it happened, and just like M. Cobanli said:
“The best way to change the future is to design it.”
Thanks ✨
This post was a long one, but I just wanted to share a little bit about my journey and trying to help build a more transparent and brighter future.
