Bring Yourself To Work Day

Almost twenty years ago, The Ms Foundation For Women initiated what has now become an annual workplace tradition: Take Your Daughter To Work Day®.

The originating idea focused upon providing young women, aged eight to twelve, exposure to the real world of work. When I took my daughter to work with me, she got to experience the numbing boredom of meetings, the uneasy exchange of information as a client critiqued a draft status report, and the disorienting choices in a corporate cafeteria. Because I was then working as a traveling consultant, she also got to experience two ninety minute plane rides, complete with frantic drives to overcrowded airports.

I still remember many of the details of that day because, with her present, I was somehow more present myself. It wasn’t just that I’d taken my daughter to work with me that day, but that I’d brought a little bit more of myself there that day, too.

And that memory got me thinking. How often do I really bring my full self to work with me? Recent studies show that people leave a lot of their real selves at home when they report to work, explaining that it’s just too risky to show up out of prescribed role. We each seem to learn early in our careers what parts of our nature we should omit from our public selves. What starts as an innocent attempt to fit in can, repeated over time, become a work life-limiting pattern.

My idea for a Bring Yourself To Work Day is to disrupt this pattern, if only for a day. What is this pattern?

Let’s call this pattern The Five Inhibitions. They work like this:

1. To see and hear only what should be, was, or will be, instead of what is here.
2. To say only what one ought to say instead of what one feels and thinks.
3. To feel only what one ought to feel instead of what one really feels.
4. To ask only for what one is supposed to want and then wait for permission to act instead of asking for what one wants.
5. To choose to be “secure” and not rock the boat instead of taking risks in one’s own behalf.

I invite you to bring yourself to Bring Yourself To Work Day everyday! This might be a really freaky Friday, where each of us sees work in a really different way. Where we work together to create a workplace that’s safe for us to really be ourselves.

On this day, I invite you to set aside the five great inhibitions and engage in The Five Freedoms instead. Virginia Satir suggested that we each have five freedoms. These freedoms are:

1. To see and hear what is here, instead of what should be, was, or will be.
2. To say what one feels and thinks instead of what one should.
3. To feel what one feels, instead of what one ought.
4. To ask for what one wants, instead of always waiting for permission.
5. To take risks in one's own behalf, instead of choosing only to be “secure” and not rocking the boat.

For Bring Yourself To Work Day, consider adding a sixth freedom, the freedom to choose when and where to exercise the other five freedoms! Fully exercising the six freedoms is widely believed to be career limiting. I’m betting that it won’t be.

Following posts will offer some warming-up exercises to help you get your six freedoms ready for roll-out on your own personal Bring Yourself To Work Day.

Please share this idea widely.

I think we have an opportunity to create together the sort of workplaces we each aspire to have.

Let’s get a real movement started!