Archives for October 2023

Issues of gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, age, disability, and religion are essential for us to address in today’s world – in society and at work.

However, these important issues can be hard to work through authentically, since they can bring up thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are both deeply personal and difficult to understand from our various perspectives.

They also touch on issues of privilege, oppression, bias (both conscious and unconscious), and opportunity. These things can elicit strong emotions and reactions for many of us, understandably.

For these and other reasons, it’s becoming all the more important to focus on inclusion at work and address all the related challenges that can come up in this regard within our teams and organizations.

The Importance of Promoting Inclusion at Work

For many people who identify as belonging to one or more non-dominant groups, their identity can raise issues of challenge, pride, struggle, and more, especially at work.

Promoting inclusion in our teams and companies involves each of us making a conscious effort to consider, discuss, and remain mindful of these dynamics and concerns. It’s also about fostering a setting that prioritizes openness, empathy, support, and safety, even when it’s difficult or uncomfortable.

“Covering” Your Identity

The term covering was coined by sociologist Erving Goffman to describe how even individuals with known stigmatized identities make “a great effort to keep their stigma from looming large.” Kenji Yoshino, a constitutional law professor at NYU, further developed this idea and came up with four different categories in which we “cover”: (1) Appearance, (2) Affiliation, (3) Advocacy, and (4) Association.

In essence, we often do what we can to cover aspects of ourselves that we believe might put us out of the “mainstream” of our environment. Yoshino partnered with Christie Smith, Managing Principal of the Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion, to measure the prevalence of covering at work. They distributed a survey to employees in organizations across 10 different industries. The 3,129 respondents included a mix of ages, genders, races/ethnicities, and orientations. They also came from different levels of seniority within their organizations.

Sixty-one percent of respondents reported covering at least one of these four categories at work. According to the study, 83 percent of LGBTQ individuals, 79 percent of blacks, 67 percent of women of color, 66 percent of women, and 63 percent of Hispanics cover. While the researchers found that covering occurred more frequently within groups that have been historically under-represented, they also found that 45 percent of heterosexual white men reported covering as well.

How to Create Inclusion at Work

Issues of diversity and inclusion impact all of us. And while they clearly play a significant role in the lives and careers of women and members of every minority group, it’s important that we all be willing to look at and talk about these issues and do what we can to create an environment that is as inclusive as possible. For us to do this, it takes authenticity, emotional intelligence, and courage – both individually and collectively.

We’re All More Alike Than We Think

A big paradox of being human is that on the one hand, we’re all unique—by virtue of how we look, our background, our race, our gender, how we think, our religion, our skills, our personalities, our age, what we value, our histories, our orientation, our socioeconomic status, and so forth. Yet on the other hand, the further down below the waterline we go on our iceberg, the more we’re alike.

We’re all human beings and we experience the same emotions—love, fear, joy, shame, gratitude, sadness, excitement, anger, and more.

By prioritizing mindfulness, sensitivity, and awareness in recognizing, understanding, and valuing our diverse attributes, and by actively empowering those who might be marginalized, we can cultivate genuinely inclusive teams, environments, and cultures. And this approach benefits everyone involved.

What are you doing to create an inclusive environment around you at work?  What else is needed to make sure that it’s as inclusive as possible?

Liked this article? Here are three more!

The Important Benefits of Being Grateful at Work
Life’s Easy… It’s Dealing With Ourselves That’s Hard
Self-Improvement vs. Self-Acceptance

Portions of this piece were excerpted from Bring Your Whole Self to Work, by Mike Robbins, with permission.  Published by Hay House (May 2018) and available online or in bookstores.

This article was updated for 2023.

Many people underestimate the benefits of being grateful in the workplace. Not only does being grateful help your team achieve a better, more positive mindset, but it also improves relationships, fosters feelings of closeness, increases motivation, and reduces stress.

Practicing gratitude is also a great way to connect with your team on a more personal and emotional level, which can ultimately lead to a more unified, bonded team.

With today’s reality of remote and hybrid working, it can be difficult to connect effectively and personally, which is why implementing certain practices into your weekly team meetings is so important.

One great way to connect with your team is through a gratitude practice, which I learned about from Erica Fox, the former Head of Learning Programs at Google. In her weekly, virtual team meetings, she would ask team members to share something they were grateful for from the previous week—it could be something work related or personal, as long as it was something that they genuinely felt grateful about.

She asked them not only to share this verbally with their teammates but also to write down what they were grateful for on a post-it note and stick it somewhere out of sight in their workspace (like inside a folder or drawer).

She thought it would be fun for them to find the post-it note again sometime later and be reminded of the positive thing they were grateful for that they shared with the team.

Erica noticed so many improvements to her team dynamic after beginning this practice.

The Benefits of Being Grateful at Work

Practicing gratitude is a fun way to set a nice tone for your team and your relationships with one another. It allows people to connect with each other in a more personal and positive way, even though they may not all be sitting in the same room together.

Some people on your team may be more into it than others, which is often the case for things like this. But as you make it a more common practice in how you engage with one another, you may just find that your team members will begin enjoying it.

In addition to creating a practice/routine of appreciation, one of the biggest benefits of being grateful is that it allows your team to share more about themselves with each other, which ultimately leads to more openness, vulnerability, and psychological safety within the team. And these things lead to better work results.

As this practice becomes more common in your team meetings, people will slowly become more comfortable with it, leading to closer connections and celebrations of one another.

These types of activities and practices can improve teams.

Practicing gratitude makes a difference in more ways than you may think. A research article published by the University of Michigan in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science found that a workplace characterized by positive practices similar to the practice of gratitude can help people excel in a variety of ways.

The main reasons these types of practices benefit teams and companies include:

Increased positive emotions

Practicing gratitude can improve peoples’ relationships with their colleagues and amplify their creativity, which can increase employee engagement, enhance job satisfaction, improve communication, and ultimately lead to a better, more positive work environment.

Ability to buffer against negative events

Gratitude can help employees buffer against negative events like stress or failure, improving people’s ability to bounce back from challenges. Gratitude encourages people to focus on the positive aspects of even challenging situations. It builds resilience so employees are better equipped to overcome difficulties.

Attract and bolster employees

Practicing regular gratitude with your team brings out the best in employees. It helps them feel more connected with their organization. It also builds trust between employees and leaders and makes employees feel appreciated.

Your bottom line

Believe it or not, these types of practices can also benefit your bottom line and lead to higher performance. According to the above study, “When organizations institute positive, virtuous practices they achieve significantly higher levels of organizational effectiveness—including financial performance, customer satisfaction, and productivity.”

If you’re not practicing gratitude at work, it might be time to do so. Not only will it help create a more positive mindset among team members, but it will also build trust and foster deeper, more personal connections.

What can you do to bring more gratitude to your work and your team?  Share your thoughts or questions below in the comments.

This is an excerpt from Bring Your Whole Self to Work, by Mike Robbins, with permission.  Published by Hay House (May 2018) and available online or in bookstores.

Like this article? Here are three more!

Are You Bringing Your Whole Self to Work?
Life’s Easy… It’s Dealing With Ourselves That’s Hard
Have the Courage to Be Vulnerable

This article was originally published in 2018 and updated for 2023.

To truly succeed, especially in today’s business world, we must bring our whole self to work.

But bringing our whole self to work isn’t just about us. It’s also about the teams and organizations that we’re a part of. Showing up authentically helps teams thrive and is also essential in creating an environment where people feel safe enough to bring all of who they are to work.

Why It’s So Important to Bring Your Whole Self to Work

The lines between our personal and professional lives have blurred more than ever in recent years, especially given all we’ve been through.

Bringing our whole self to work means showing up authentically, leading with humility, and remembering that we’re all vulnerable, imperfect human beings doing the best we can. It’s also about having the courage to take risks, speak up, ask for help, connect with others in a genuine way, and allow ourselves to be truly seen.

But it’s not always easy for us to show up this way, in general, and especially at work. It also takes commitment, intention, and courage for leaders and organizations to create environments that are conducive to this type of authenticity and humanity.

By Bringing Your Whole Self to Work, You Can Impact the People Around You

When we bring our whole selves to work, not only are we more likely to create success and fulfillment for ourselves, but we’re able to have the greatest impact on the people around us. It creates a culture that encourages us to show up fully and allows us collectively to do our best, most innovative work together.

I’ve spent over two decades as a speaker and consultant, partnering with people, leaders, and teams in all types of companies.  I’ve witnessed numerous instances highlighting effective and ineffective strategies for achieving success and fostering engagement among individuals, managers, and organizations. Additionally, in my personal life and career journey, I’ve grappled with fears, doubts, insecurities, and an unwarranted fixation on seeking approval. My dedication to authenticity and bringing my whole self to both work and life is an ongoing practice that is both challenging and important.

I’ve witnessed, experienced, and learned a great deal through my own work and with my clients over the years.  Of course, every work environment is unique. Being at Google in the heart of Silicon Valley is quite different from working for the City of San Antonio in Texas. Working for ourselves out of our spare bedroom in Ohio is also very different from leading a global team at Microsoft while being based in Europe and traveling internationally all the time.

However, regardless of where you work, what kind of work you do, or with whom you do it—bringing your whole self to work allows you to be more satisfied, effective, and free. And if you’re an owner, leader, or just someone who wants to have influence on those around you, having the courage to lead with authenticity allows you to build or enhance your team’s culture in such a way that encourages others to bring all of who they are to work—which will unlock greater creativity, connection, and performance for your group and company.

5 Things You Can Do to Bring Your Whole Self to Work

Here are five specific things you can do to both bring all of who you are to work and empower the people with whom you work to be as effective, successful, and engaged as possible:

1. Be Authentic

The foundation of bringing your whole self to work is authenticity, which is about showing up honestly, without self-righteousness, and with vulnerability. It takes courage to be authentic, and it’s essential for trust, growth, and connection.

2. Utilize the Power of Appreciation

Appreciation is fundamental to building strong relationships, keeping things in a healthy perspective, and empowering teams. Bringing your whole self to work is about being willing to be seen, and also about seeing and supporting the people around you, which is what appreciation provides.

3. Focus on Emotional Intelligence

Your emotional intelligence (EQ) is often more important than your skills, IQ, and experience—in terms of your ability both to manage your relationships and bring your whole self to work. EQ is both about you (self-awareness and self-management) and about how you relate to others (social awareness and relationship management).

4. Embrace a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset entails approaching both your professional endeavors and life in general with the belief that improvement is possible through dedication, hard work, and consistent practice. It involves viewing every experience, particularly challenges, as valuable opportunities for growth and learning.

5. Create a Championship Team

The people you work with and the environment around you have a significant impact on your ability (or inability) to fully show up, engage, and thrive. And at the same time, the more willing you are to bring your whole self to work, the more impact you can have on others. Creating a championship team is about building a culture that is safe and conducive to people being themselves, caring about one another, and being willing and able to do great work together.

These concepts are fairly easy to understand on the surface. But like many important aspects of life, growth, and business, it’s not the understanding of them that makes the biggest difference, it’s their application.  And, the application of these ideas takes real courage.  We have to be willing to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is about showing your emotions, taking risks, and diving into uncertainty.

The activities, relationships, and goals that matter most to us (both personally and professionally), are always going to involve emotional exposure, risk, and/or uncertainty.

Are you willing to lean into vulnerability and to bring all of who you are to work?  If so, you can expand the impact, influence, and success of your work and your life.

Portions of this article are excerpted from the book Bring Your Whole Self to Work, by Mike Robbins, with permission.  Published by Hay House (May 2018) and available online or in bookstores.

Liked this article? Here are three more!

Life’s Easy… It’s Dealing With Ourselves That’s Hard
Self-Improvement vs. Self-Acceptance
4 Things to Remember When Giving Feedback

This article was originally published in 2018 and updated for 2023.