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Happy Thursday!
Hope all my corporate sisters are well and striving along as we come near to this week’s close!
Speaking of striving, after so many years fighting to be successful at work despite unfair race and gender-based prejudice, we tend to raise defensiveness walls which can at times stand in our way to success.
From my own experience in Big Corporate, I know I’ve exhibited more defensiveness in some cases than was necessary. Due to our experience with race and gender-based prejudice, we may at times mold our thought process, and resulting reaction pattern, to excessively rely on defensiveness in many a professional situation. I know I have…
Yet I’ve also come to understand that while prejudice is real in many a corporate or other professional setting, it’s also not always about race or gender. Raising our defensive walls at work can certainly have its benefits, yet it may also hinder us from leveraging the feedback we may be receiving from colleagues, superiors and even simply situations at hand.
How do we then differentiate between the positive and negative messages we get from our professional environments, so as to respond accordingly? Is it even possible to tailor our response to the many changing factors at work in our professional environments? And really, is being defensive hurting us more than it actually can help us?
While I strongly believe that each one of us has a responsibility to leave our workplaces a bit better than we found them, we must also carefully pick where it is most productive to expand our hard-earned energy.
Raising our defensiveness walls to ward off prejudice may be necessary in some instances, yes! Yet choosing to act instead of reacting, and responding with stellar performance instead of defensive words or actions may not only ward off prejudice if need be, but also set a positive precedent in all cases.
Do you think raising our defensiveness walls may at times stand in the way of our success?
The Corporate Sister.
