Is it career suicide to be sensitive at work?
Not if you do it right.
It sometimes seems like the work world is made for extroverts.
When you work in the corporate world, you see a lot of successful extroverts. As a quiet sensitive person, you might even notice them getting more than their fair share of promotions, accolades, and influential mentors.
Because what they do works, you may even decide to be more like them. If you want to get ahead, it seems prudent to bury your sensitivity and cultivate better ways of being – being more social, accepting all sorts of business invitations; forcing yourself to speak up in every meeting; volunteering to run more projects than your peers. The list goes on.
The good news is that these strategies can pay off. I know this because that’s exactly what I did in my career. Back in the day, I secretly took Dale Carnegie classes, volunteered to do presentations at every opportunity, I attended every social event, went to networking events, and hung out at the “proverbial water cooler.”
And, guess what? It worked. I became successful. But that’s not all. I also burned out. Not once. Not twice. But, three times. I rode the wave, and then I crashed. Big time.
Hiding out became my personal life.
The other thing I did during that period of my career when my star rose was hide. The work week left me so exhausted that I had nothing left for my personal life. So weekends became my time to hide out, spend time alone, and recharge my batteries.
When someone asked me to do something on a Friday night, I would say, “I have plans.” That was true, even if that plan was to go home have a glass or two of wine, eat goldfish crackers, and read People Magazine.
Introverts recharge their energy by being alone; extroverts recharge by being with others. I didn’t find this out until later, but when I eventually heard it, it really resonated with me. Because after a busy week at work, I didn’t want to see anyone.
Hiding worked for a long time, but eventually I wanted to hide all the time – at work and at home as a slid into burn-out.
It takes a lot of energy to be someone you're not.
We think we burn out from doing too much. This can be true, but for us sensitives, trying to get by in an extrovert world, we get hit twice – by doing too much and trying to be someone we’re not.
So, what if you let yourself be yourself at work? What would happen then?
Is it career suicide to be known as sensitive at work?
Back to the original question … Back in the day, I definitely believed it would be career suicide if others knew I was sensitive. These days, I’m not so sure. Looking back, knowing what I know now, I would call it a career-limiting belief. While it looked like it propelled me forward, it actually held me back.
That’s because this single belief drove so much of the behaviour that burned me out. I constantly felt I had to prove myself, that I had to be better than others just to keep my head above water.
These days, I see a lot of sensitive people mindfully owning their sensitivity and being successful – Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, Jodie Foster, Serena Williams to name a few. (Note: these are celebrities that are known as Projectors in Human Design, a proxy I’m using for being a sensitive introvert.)
Question your beliefs about your sensitivity.
So, when I see such beliefs in my clients, I encourage them to question them. I wish I had questioned my own beliefs. It would have saved me a lot of angst, money, and even my career.
The first step is to actually notice you have beliefs about being sensitive at work. If you find that you always need to prove yourself, that’s a good place to start. Or, if you’re burned out, stressed, full of anxiety, you can start there.
When you unearth a belief, the first question you can ask is, “Is this true?” Back then, I would have said yes. But, if I’d had a coach in my corner, she might have slowed me down enough to really examine that belief. If I had spent an hour or two or three really thinking about this, turning it around, I may have discovered a good thing or two about my sensitivity. I might have begun my journey of coming to believe that my sensitivity is a superpower. I might have even leaned into my sensitivity and been proud of it.
But, I didn’t have support back then, so I kept going until I couldn’t anymore.
The thing about limiting beliefs is that they operate below the surface of your own awareness and they drive your way of being and your behaviour. Beliefs like this create adaptive strategies and dysfunction. For me it looked like proving my worth through over-working and over-exposing myself.
Not if you do it right.
By “doing it right”, what I mean is to truly be yourself. I would even go so far as to say that once you become authentically you, you become magnetic. Think about people you admire. They’re not cookie cutter. They’re unique. So are you.
We have so much more information now than we did back then. That’s why I would say it’s not career suicide to be sensitive at work. I’m not suggesting we all throw caution to the wind, but that we mindfully become ourselves at work. Or, find work where we can be ourselves.
We do this by knowing ourselves, cultivating our strengths, working on our weaknesses, and advocating for ourselves. We notice when we wander off-track (into overwork or proving ourselves) and have tools to bring us back on on-track.
Honoring Your Sensitivity
What if we could not just accept ourselves as we are, but we could truly honor our quiet, sensitive natures? What if the culture did the same?
It all starts with us and our inner work. We need to be the first to think we are awesome just the way we are. Once we unravel our limiting beliefs and step out of our shame, others will also see us for who we truly are.
Start with you.
