Embrace Your Square

I needed a sign, and I got one.

Deb and I, working together recently.

Bonus points: it came from a leader whom I've respected since I was 24 years old.: my first "big boss" Deborah. Deb quite humorously was and remains about a foot shorter than me in stature and about 10 feet taller in awesomeness.

Deborah taught me a great many things in the earliest part of my career, among them not to mope if a campaign season was disappointing, but instead to strategize to best practice and exceed expectations next time. Guess what? That works.

Deb taught me to always be prepared, oftentimes with her unmatched "put you on the spot, like it or not" wry humor. Most of all, she taught me by doing: Deborah leads to this day by understated example, amazing visionary acumen, deep listening, and solid kindness.

Flash forward a little over 20 years. Recently, I was feeling unmoored for a lot of reasons. The world right now is, well, weird. I'm at a point in real life where sometimes it feels like I'm losing people and touchstones to time and sundry assorted semi-evils faster than I can collect new relationships and memories. Plus, as I seek to grow as a newer leader, I had found myself taking advice from myriad directions: books, articles, best practices, and trusted people whose sometimes diametrically opposed thoughts could leave me dizzy.

Then, almost by a miracle, on just the right day at just the right moment, when I was questioning just how to navigate, Deborah unwittingly gave me a sign. She found it in an old file she was cleaning out: the documentation of a joke we'd been running for about 20 years.

Deborah found the now ancient worksheet that held my odd square.

"I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel." -Pee Wee Herman in Pee Wee's Big Adventure

When I worked on Deborah's non-profit sales team way back before there was gray hair under my "totally natural" blonde, our entire group took individual Myers-Briggs personality tests as part of a training. Then, in the spirit of collaboration, we shared our results with everyone - our names placed in squares on a page, corresponding to personality types.

My very own square. Names blocked out for privacy.

Unsurprisingly to me (I have a lifelong major in endearingly offbeat), I ended up with my very own lone square. Everyone else was clustered in squares together - at the very least groups of two. Much of the sales team was positively stacked in a particularly salesy personality type's square. Then there was me: inscrutably different. My peers, smiling awkwardly, didn't quite know what to say or what sort of feedback to begin to share.

But Deborah - bless her - got it immediately. After the session, she turned to me privately and said, "Are you sure you really want to be a fundraiser?" Honestly, I was mildly insulted for at least half a second. I loved my job, I loved the mission of the nonprofit where I worked at the time, loved...asking people for money? Um. Not so much that last part. I was good at it, but I didn't really enjoy it. I didn't bound out of bed in the morning ready to tackle a $500K goal really. I was a lot more interested in teaching and telling stories.

The rest, thanks to Deborah's quick but essential question, is history. At the next career-transition opportunity (that came through a family geographic move: yes, everything happens for a reason) landed me closer to where I belonged: systems training and data quality. There, I could help people feel great about learning things that supported our mission. And my next move after that - building an internal and executive communications department from the ground up - powered the rest of my professional life's trajectory and finally let me lean into my academic training and very best skills.

Embrace Your Square

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Deborah just chillin', ready to ask you the deep and essential questions that just might change your life. So, it's up to each of us to figure out "What's my place, where do I belong, what feels the best?" And you know what, it's OK if that is an evolving thing and it's also OK if you're not for everyone.

I write a lot. I talk a lot. I live for detail. I also care fiercely. That combo of traits is NOT for everyone. Some beloved colleagues truly want to slap me in the head for my sense of detail at times (I know it, I get it, I love them anyway. We're not mad at one another, we're just built differently - our Myers-Briggs, DISC, and every other evaluation show it over and over). Those facts used to throw me, make me question myself, my value, even my workplace usefulness. Growing from the feedback and styles of others is a very good thing - in my case, it's prompted me to continue to be a lifelong learner, taking the occasional class on how and when to shut up. (My husband would tell you, growth area).

But I've also learned that holding our own particular traits in a place of honor matters and propels us forward. In fact, when we're feeling the most uncertain as leaders, as staff, as daughter, mothers, wives, friends, humans - you name it - holding fast to who we are at the core of ourselves will almost never steer us wrong. I'd forgotten that a little, until an old worksheet, humorously shared, prompted me to remember deeply that who I am is fine.

Sometimes, my exacting level of detail is incredibly necessary. Sometimes my offbeat creativity is exactly what's needed to move a project forward. Here and there my weird mix of feeling so deeply and also judging in a really fact-based way is a gamechanger. My endless ability to both listen to others' stories and tell them is an asset, when managed and offered thoughtfully and judiciously.

I'll say it again: the world is weird these days. Whether you're into Brene Brown or Murphy Brown or Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? trust me: who you are at your deepest core matters. Who you are may be the most essential thing you bring to work each day; who you are is also the most important thing you'll ever have to offer to the world, and to the enhancement of your own life and the lives of those you treasure.

So embrace your square, it's yours alone.