Can you be yourself at work?

Linden Vazey |  Dec 2021

2024년 2월 2일 shadowing 완료

 

 

 

 

 

TED Talker/연자

Linden Vazey

Senior Manager - IT Risk and Assurance at EY

Coach, facilitator, trainer

 

The big idea that i want to bring to you is about how we can bring more of who we are to our work. I know it sounds simple, but how many of you here have ever had the feeling that perhaps you can't bring all of who you are to the workplace? Can we get a show of hands? yeah yeah me too. And I already knew I wasn't alone in that because there are many people who I've spoken to throughout my career who felt the same that the environment that they work in somehow was expecting something of them to show up a certain way and that there were parts of themselves that they had to deny or somehow hide in order to fit in.

 

This isn't just something that I see and people that I speak to, but even in social media just two weeks ago, I saw a post from a young woman. She was reaching out for help because she'd been in her first role for about a year out of university. Her university environment had been so supportive of conversations about mental health and well-being and she felt like it was really easy to talk to people there, but in the workplace, she was finding that it was a different story. Her post said that she was experiencing anxiety attacks, she was getting ill and she didn't know what to say or who to talk to. There was just something about the workplace situation that was making it hard for her to speak up.

I knew this all too well because I experienced exactly the same thing. At 25, I experienced burnout. There was so much going on in my life at that time and for whatever reason, I kept feeling this pressure to show up a certain way as this high-performing person who has everything under control and I didn't feel like I could speak up about what was going on. So, I've really been curious about this; what is it about our workplaces our leaders and us that makes these conversations so uncomfortable. Authenticity isn't just a nice to have. What we've found is through the well-being at work survey done by AUT is in the last 18 months people are experiencing more and more risk of burnout . Back in April of 2020, your risk of burnout was one in nine. This year, in fact just last month, November 2021, the well-being at work study discovered that your risk of burnout is just one in three. Now, that statistic really took my breath away.

 

Burnout's no joke. It's not something I would ever want anyone else to experience. But regardless of all the research we have and how much we know about burnout, its prevalence and the fact that it is increasing, 
organizations haven't seem to do anything about it. Why is that? Well, there's a great article and have a business review called why organizations don't learn. It talks about four things, four thinking styles, behavior styles that mean that we change the way that we show up at work and the really amazing thing is that they create an acronym called safe, s-a-f-e. 

The first is we care more about success than we do about trying new things, making mistakes and failing because this focus on success of the things we're meant to achieve, the KPIs, the targets. These create definitions of success that are outside of ourselves. It creates an innate sense of a fear of failure and when we have that fear of failure, we want to go back to behaviors and ways of doing things which have made us successful in the past. So, we take that way of doing things and we just keep repeating it over and over. We don't learn, we don't grow,  and we're not innovating. We're not trying anything new. 

 

The second is a focus on action. So, we're keeping busy, we're doing all the things, our to-do lists are massive, our calendars are full of meetings and on the one hand it makes us feel really important. But, on the other hand, it causes exhaustion and it contributes to that likelihood of burnout.

The next, f, is about fitting in. We're really great as human beings of being able to see how other people are behaving and what makes them successful and adapting ourselves so that we can be part of that organization to fit in to, belong, And, that's a wonderful thing except when it means that there are strengths and there are parts of ourselves that we don't bring things, that we deny things, that we hide. So, we sacrifice something when we fit in, 
but when a leader comes up through an environment like this, they tend to expect that from others. So, instead of embracing diversity, they're instead looking for compliance and the people pleasing. I know people pleasing myself it's something i've struggled with for a very long time. But, it really damages your sense of authenticity because you're constantly figuring out what other people around you need and expect from you and it creates so much tension

 

The last, expert. We create this image of ourselves as the go-to person, the person that knows things, the person who's the expert on this particular subject and we work hard to bring that to reality. But, it creates a frame of reference, which means that we see things as right or wrong. When we engage with others who may have different opinions, different perspectives than what we do, we might try and just subtly get them to see things our way or we may become actually quite directive and tell people how things should be done rather than letting them figure things out for themselves try and make mistakes. So, there are so many strengths to being the expert, but,  they're also really really difficult to collaborate with, which means that it's harder to achieve your collective goals.

So, s-a-f-e, those four things are safe thinking. And, those are the things that we go to when we feel a sense of pressure or stress because those things are going to help us feel a sense of comfort, security and safeness. Then, 
what's the alternative? If we decide we want to show up more of who we really are to embrace authenticity, it can be really hard because giving up that safe thinking means we have to replace it with something new. For myself, that meant I had to let go of my perfectionist, and embrace the fact that I might make mistakes, I might fail, I might try things and not achieve the results, I want and keep trying and failing, trying and failing, and that in a way was kind of terrifying to be honest. So, it's a real decision and a real commitment. But, to do it, we can't just delete safe thinking. We have to replace it with something new.

So, there are four things which i've replaced safe thinking with which really helped me to be courageous to try new things, to keep learning and growing, and the great offshoot is that I feel more authentic, confident, and can bring more of myself to any situation. The first is purpose. A sense of purpose gives us our own inner definition of success. Rather than what other people expect of us, those external KPIs, targets, we figure out for ourselves who we are, what we're here to contribute and the impact that we want to have on others. The next is clarity. Taking time to really think and consider about what's important to us, taking that purpose and creating action steps and a plan, 
that's going to help us to bring that to reality, to help us make decisions about the things which we can uniquely bring our gifts and talents to and the things which we can delegate or the things that we can politely decline. 

Thirdly, a focus on connection. One of the gifts of people that you can really trust and be yourself with is that you 
get the opportunity to learn even more about who you are and how you relate to other people. In connection, these trusted relationships mean that we can expand grow and perform at new levels in ways which we didn't even think possible for ourselves. We can admit mistakes, we can be honest about our struggles and the things which we wouldn't necessarily want to admit about ourselves but are part of the fullness of our humanity. And lastly, a focus on learning. Learning is a skill that we as humans just naturally have built into us. You can see that from small children right from the first days and hours of their life, they're constantly open to and absorbing things and learning and developing from it. We carry that capacity throughout our lives and so our ability to learn to try new things to reflect on them is a key part of our adaptability. Especially when life gets so different and uncertain like it is today.

So, if we can carry those things with us, our sense of purpose, our clarity, connection with others, and our ability to keep changing, growing, and learning throughout our lives. We'll automatically bring more of who we are to every situation that we're in. I've had the benefit of this experience for myself and I can now happily say, that the organizations i'm working with and the people that I coach, I feel like I have those connections with I can bring all of who I am to them, I can have difficult conversations with confidence, knowing that my self-worth doesn't rest and what anybody else thinks of me, but it rests right here. And so, I may not be having safe thinking and I may not feel that sense of security and comfort, but I feel more of a sense of my own aliveness, the contribution that I make the impact that I have on others, and I wouldn't swap that for anything.

 

Words&phrases/어휘공부

• offshoot: something that has developed from something larger that already existed. Cyber cafes are just the latest offshoot of the Internet craze