You Can Be Yourself Here (eBook)

Introduction

If you’re reading this book, it is highly likely that you survived high school.

I use the term “survived” quite deliberately because high school is a nearly universal experience: a gauntlet of tumultuous times as you are either entering or coming out of puberty, so your hormones are doing some pretty messed-up things to make you feel weird, awkward, and out of place. The prevailing developmental quest that happens while we are at high school is that of finding your own identity and of attempting to individuate from your parents while at the same time endeavoring to fit in with everyone else. And in our quest to fit in, we learn to code switch, cover up aspects of our identity, bend ourselves into different shapes, and engage in a plethora of unworkable and ultimately futile behaviors in order to belong.

High school is marked by so many challenging and potentially traumatic experiences of being singled out by teachers, not being able to kick a ball high enough, or, hell, having to undress and shower in front of everyone after PE. This all becomes amplified if you are Black, Brown, or mixed-race, if you are female, trans, or queer, or if you are disabled in some way. For any human being at that age, it’s a time of change and turmoil. If you’re also a person who comes from a historically disempowered or oppressed community, it’s even worse.

Sometimes, it probably felt like you were never going to survive that area of your life . . . but you did!

However, surviving doesn’t mean that the experience wasn’t terrible or that you no longer bear the scars from it. So, when you go on to encounter situations that are similar enough to those experiences you dealt with in high school, all of those memories and feelings resurface and are brought into the present day. Without being aware of it, we respond to here-and-now experiences with there-and-then programming.

Let me share with you a personal story by way of illustrating my point. As an overweight, queer teen, I was desperate to find my people. I tried to fit in with the boys, the girls, the sporty kids (definitely didn’t work), the geeky kids, the naughty kids—I even tried to fit in with the teachers and the dinner ladies.1 To do so, I would disown or suppress an aspect of my Self, 2 my behavior, or my personality in order to be deemed acceptable by others so that they would not “other” me.3 These acts were ultimately futile because that which was suppressed will eventually became expressed, leading to my newfound community backing away from the person they thought they knew and rendering me alone to live out my status as an outsider who could be bullied and picked on.

When I was fourteen years old, I had an English Literature class with Mr. Neville. After one assignment, he threw my essay back at me and said, “Dobson-Smith, you need to be more like Rachel Warner. She has written an amazing essay.”

The class laughed at me, I felt shamed, and (in that moment, at least) I hated Rachel Warner—and I despised Mr. Neville.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and somebody in a professional context said to me, “DDS, you should go and speak to this person who can help you improve on this area of work.”

On one level, that was a perfectly innocuous expression of help that person was trying to give me. But on another level, I immediately thought, Holy hell, I am not going to do that!

I remembered the shame I felt when Mr. Neville told me that I wasn’t as good as Rachel Warner, so there was no way I was going to go and ask for help. My there-and-then programming fueled my knee-jerk reaction, even though there was no direct relation to the here-and-now situation I was in.

This book is not about healing the scars from surviving high school; it’s about acknowledging our need for inclusion and recognizing that certain elements of the workplace are similar enough to high school that they can bring forward, trigger, and emulate some of the feelings of exclusion and awkwardness we felt back then.

Think about it: there are many parallels between high school and the world of work. Classes have become departments; principals and headteachers have become CEOs; the administration has become shareholders or boards of directors; and the teenage cliques, factions, groups, and gangs have transformed into “those you lunch with”—and those you don’t.

I See Your Pain

Because you have picked up this book, I would imagine you are worried about high levels of attrition and low levels of satisfaction amongst your employees, particularly within historically disempowered and marginalized communities.

Beyond the data, you probably have firsthand experience of the challenges people are experiencing in terms of belonging in your workplace. Perhaps you’ve noticed cliques forming amongst certain groups of colleagues. Maybe you are dealing with an increasing number of employee grievances about microaggressions and exclusionary behavior.4 Or it could be that you have started to become aware of how few candidates you are able to attract, hire, and keep from underrepresented communities.

You might be feeling the pressure to come up with a plan to evolve the culture, stem the attrition tide, and boost morale, but you are at a loss as to where to start because of the overwhelming size of the problem.

And then, there is your own experience of belonging.

These dynamics and their parallels to high school can be at best a distraction and at worst damaging. They impact the performance of individuals, teams, and organizations in unseen and powerful ways. I have come to appreciate over the years—and through my work around the globe—that belonging is an archetypal experience that we all seek. It transcends geographies, cultures, and identities.

I also sense that, while my experience of belonging is just that—my experience—I’m not alone in my experiences of not-belonging in places I wished I did, and I’m not alone in my quest for finding belonging in places that I should.

My Story

I grew up in a small town. I was overweight, struggling to come terms with being queer, and living in a home where I was verbally, mentally, and emotionally abused and neglected. Love was conditional, and I don’t truly know what it feels like to be nurtured by a primary caregiver. The only times I received any positive attention were when I performed well on a test, vacuumed the carpet, or made a sandwich for my dad.

I always felt like I had to change who I was to become acceptable (and, therefore, accepted) and to find a place where I would be included and welcomed. I was bullied and ostracized in my own social environment, just as many people are in high school.

My journey to belonging was a series of happenings, but the very first time I felt like I belonged was when I was working at Marks & Spencer (a British retailer) as a personnel management trainee in Cardiff, Wales. The store manager at the time, a guy called Paul Smith, pulled me to one side and said to me, “I see you. I see you trying to be something you’re not, and I want to help you.”

He helped me to access company-sponsored therapy sessions—it was the first time I’d ever been to therapy.

That was when I was twenty-four years old. I’m now forty-eight, as of the writing of this book, so that was half my life ago. Today, I’m a published author, an executive coach, a speaker on leadership and growth—and a licensed therapist. It was the conversation with Paul Smith—that intervention, that amount of care and love from somebody who was several ranks senior to me, noticing and deciding to help—that was the catalyst that shifted my own career trajectory.

Of course, the journey from then to now is never a straight line.

In my adult life, I came out as gay (I now identify as queer, but back then “queer” was a derogatory term) and then found myself in three abusive relationships, repeating what I had learned earlier in life. It wasn’t until I met David, now my husband who I’ve been with for sixteen years, that I began to realize that I could be loved for who I am—just as I am.

From that moment when we met when I was thirty-one years old, I have worked to undo all of what I learned to be false about myself. I spent the first half of my life learning that it wasn’t okay to be me, and I have spent the second half of my life (so far) discovering that, actually, it is more than okay to be who I am. It is glorious to be me.

I know that when I like being me, and when I can be me without fear of being shunned or rejected from the group I’m in, I feel fantastic. I sleep better, I treat myself better, and I feel more alive. I feel more motivated, so I can bring all of myself to my work and be creative, innovative, daring, present—and just better.

But What Does This Have to Do with You?

As I mentioned earlier, while my specific stories are unique to me, my overall experience is a more universal one.

I have spent over twenty-five years working in corporations, in areas of organizational development, learning and development, and cultural transformation, in addition to becoming a therapist, an executive coach, and a Reiki master. Becoming and doing all these things has been in service of helping other people grow and become who they are.

When you are your you-est you, the best version of yourself, then everything about your life...