Ever felt like a square peg in a round hole at your workplace? Fear not, the 'Misfit’s Guide to Navigating the Office' is here to help you find your footing and thrive amidst the corporate labyrinth.
Embrace Your Weird
Conventional career advice overwhelmingly teaches that office-politicking extroverts are best set up for success.
- This logic is flawed, dated, and untrue. What companies really need are passionate, original thinkers – employees who are too odd to understand the ways things are “supposed to work.”
Don’t fake it till you make it
We’re all faking it to make it, though it’s not always quite clear what “it” is
- The impulse to want to fake it, to be more poised, polished, or more like what you perceive all those #bosses on Instagram to be, is powerful
- But pretending to be something you’re not in a new job, faking skills or contorting yourself to gain recognition is a short-sighted strategy with little return
- Your best work will come when you can be open, accountable, curious and fully who you are
Misfits, Unite!
Focus on building genuine connections and relationships, not transactional relationships based on what other people can do for you
- Ask questions that have nothing to do with work
- Actively support your co-workers, back up their ideas, offer help when you can and celebrate their successes
- Set boundaries and stick to them
