Bring Your Full Self to Work
FountainBlue's January 18 When She Speaks program, on the topic of 'Bring Your Full Self to Work'. Please join me in thanking our esteemed panelists.
Our dynamic and insightful panelists really stepped up to the challenge this month, stepping in and showing up as their full self to self-facilitate as I was voice-challenged. Below is a summary of the conversation.
Choose to be your full self.
Love what you do, do what you love so that you can choose happiness.
Have the self awareness to know how to feed your soul, seize your purpose.
Carefully align what you think, what you say and what you do, showing up fully as yourself.
Be confident enough to choose to be an empathetic, authentic self.
Know that how you show up is a proactive choice, and choose to be fully yourself.
Consider the business advantages for embracing your full self, and welcoming others to show up fully:
Culture development and relationship building
Creative problem solving
Alliances and partnerships
Motivation and retention
Below are some strategies for how to show up as your full self, even when you don't feel comfortable doing so.
Filter the feedback that you receive and absorb what will help you grow and succeed.
Adopt a growth mindset.
Surround yourself with a group of authentic, empathetic, open-minded, collaborative people and help each other to succeed.
Embrace corporate and community groups and networks who can help you grow and learn.
Find the intersection between your skills, your passion, what your customers need and what your team needs.
Think deeply about how being uniquely yourself adds value to people, process, and tech around you.
Below are some thoughts on how you can help others better embrace their full selves.
Adopt a humble, 'I'm the white belt' mentality, being open to learn from others.
Try using a 'I don't understand YET' mindset.
Show more curiosity than judgement.
We ended with a brainstorm on how we can better encourage everyone to bring their full selves to work:
Watch powerful people sharing in a vulnerable way
Heart over head – hope to get to it, apologize if it doesn’t fit in
Feel safe, seen, heard and respected
Ask people about their why
Help and nudge others
Be brave
Confident enough to try
Open-minded to try different things
Be a leader and role model
I was inspired by our panelists this month as they not only showed up so fully as their full selves, but they are also helping the rest of us to do the same!