INSPIRATION
We Weren’t Born This Way
Our upbringing leads many of us to doubt ourselves
I sat down with a new mentee recently to get to know each other and understand how I could best help her. As I always do when meeting someone new I focused the conversation both on what’s going well for her and what she’d like to improve.
To my surprise she told me that her biggest concern is how clients may perceive her expertise due to the fact that she has a Brazilian accent. Her concern gave me a bolt of clarity on how we see ourselves in relation to others.
The sad truth is that it is ingrained in us from a young age not to celebrate what unites us, but rather to recognize and focus on our differences. For why else would someone so young and brimming with so much potential be concerned about something so completely unrelated to her actual job performance?
We are not born fearing others, or distrusting them. We are taught these things, just like some of us are taught to fear dogs. Accordingly, in modern America we are taught that in being “different” we are actually less worthy.
The truth, of course, is that it was in being different that this country became great in the first place. America is the ultimate representation of what can happen when “different” people collectively harness their skills, backgrounds, and, um, differences to make amazing things happen.
How completely we seem to have lost sight of that.
My mentee works in research. By all reports she is a rising star within our company. The kind of data she works with is the ultimate in democracy. It reflects variations in demographics and psychographics, but it doesn’t judge people based on them. It offers the building blocks of insight, but doesn’t force a singular path forward upon you.
From where I sit we are still in our infancy as a country. Like all infants, we can and will learn from our naiveté, hubris, and mistakes. To start, we have to recognize that as a country of immigrants it was the reason so many of us had “accents” that made this country such an irresistible place to be in the first place.
For my part, I’ll be focused on helping my mentee stop wondering whether others will question her expertise because she doesn’t sound “American” enough. I may gently suggest to her that it’s actually those who sound too American whose expertise we should actually question.
