Blending in
‘But the truth is, I’m never going to blend in.’
So said Nadia Hussain in an article on Guardian.com (Sun 18 Oct 2020). It made me stop and think.
She has recognised this relatively early in life compared with me and seems, judging by the article, to have accepted it, even if she doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with it. It’s something that I have only recently grasped, although I am now fairly comfortable with the fact that I will always stick out. I wish I had grasped it earlier: I think I could’ve had a lot more fun when I was younger if I hadn’t been so desperate to be part of the wallpaper. I wanted to be normal.
I was brought up in the 60s when disabled people weren’t really seen on the streets. I seriously stuck out. People would stare, pull their children away from me, look at me pityingly. I’d be parked outside shops because it wasn’t possible to go inside, given the number of steps and the layout of the shop.
When I was a child, I took being different in my stride, even though it wasn’t always a comfortable place to be. It was just life as I knew it. I remember once saying to my headmistress, who was reprimanding me for waiting outside the school for my mother to pick me up, not to worry because no one would want to kidnap me, it would be far too complicated. She went into a bit of a flat spin and reassured me (unnecessarily) that just because I was a wheelchair user it didn’t mean I wasn’t likeable, or words to that effect. I was somewhat baffled by this, as I was merely being practical.
As I grew older, my attitude towards my disability changed. All through my early career, I tried to be normal. In fact, better than normal so that I would at least be acceptable. That attitude resulted in burnout more than once. At one stage, when I was working for a West Coast US company, I would be in the office by 7am and still working at home at 2am phoning and emailing my colleagues in the US. That kind of behaviour can’t last long! And if someone shortened the break in a meeting and deprived me of sufficient time to go to the loo, rather than request that the length of break stayed intact, I didn’t go. If I had to work somewhere without an accessible loo, I never said ‘no’ – I just arranged my drinking so it wouldn’t be an issue.
But the reality is, nobody really blends in. We are all different. Some of us are just a little bit more different than others, perhaps. It has been a long and challenging journey for me to accept that I am never going to blend in. I’ll wager it’s not just me, though. Trying to blend in is what almost all of us do in some way in the working environment, whether that’s adopting the ‘right’ accent, learning to play golf even when we hate it, not telling people we don’t drink so we don’t want to go to the pub. We may stand out in accomplishments or achievements, but we stand out at our peril in our behaviours; we want to look and sound like other people.
I was recently on a discussion panel about diversity on boards. I suggested that, perhaps, given the average age of board members and the correlation between age and impairment, more of us are disabled than the statistics indicate. I don’t necessarily want to ‘out’ those who are uncomfortable with disclosure, I just think it’s important that we remember we set the tone from the top. If we are concerned about diversity, we need to look to our own diversity first and get comfortable with it.
As leaders, we need to stand out confidently, proudly disclosing our differences to our colleagues, being our true selves. If I don’t take my whole self to work, how can I do my best work? If I am not prepared to lead by example, I cannot expect those I am responsible for to give of their best.