Professionalism is Destroying Creativity

[Music]

have you ever been told

that you’re too much maybe you’ve been

told in a job

to tone down your personality

have you ever been passed over for an

interview

a job that you really wanted or even a

promotion

because of the way that you dress or

even worse

because of the way that you appear if so

this tedx is for you but conversely

if you’ve ever had to hire someone or

manage

a team member or work with anyone

this tedx is also for you

i remember when i was a kid and as a kid

i would wear

the most wild outfits i would wear a big

pink

tutu or a princess dress cowgirl boots a

cowgirl hat

i remember on the weekends it felt like

the world was

my playground my imagination would run

wild

i mean a box could become a spaceship or

i could become

the next president of the united states

there were no limits and i remember as a

kid so many people

said dream big shoot for the moon at

least you’ll end up among the stars

i remember all these cheesy posters

throughout school

hung all across of the all the walls of

our classrooms

and i remember at the time having a

love-hate relationship with those

posters

part of me felt like they were

incredibly cheesy

but part of me loved them because they

reaffirmed

this belief that i could be myself and

also have success

but over time i began to realize

that that nuance that idea that you

could be yourself

and be successful wasn’t necessarily

true

this was perfectly exemplified

in a conversation i had with an educator

at the age of 16 years old

when he said if i were you i would wear

glasses i would never wear makeup and

don’t wear

anything that lets people know how

attractive you

are so i took that advice to heart

and i began to wear blazers

i put together a polished resume and i

dulled my sparkles so that i would fit

in

with others now here’s the thing this

tedx isn’t just about me and my journey

no this is about a serious issue

within corporate within people’s nine to

fives and

within people’s lives here now today

i decided to look on google and see

exactly what advice is being given to

people who

are looking for jobs looking for

promotions

and open to new opportunities wanting to

grow in their career

now this is where things get a little

crazy because 65

of bosses actually said that clothes

could be the deciding factor

between two candidates with similar

qualifications hmm

70 of employers claim

that they don’t want applicants to be

fashionable

or trendy something sits a little funny

for me with that

and i’m going to share with you the

three areas where i see

a ton of room for growth as a nation as

a world

and especially as employers and

employees

now i decided to google once again on

college recruiter

how i could be most likely to be the

best candidate for a job

and there was a lot of very interesting

advice but most of it was offered

underneath this one umbrella

and that was how to dress right for an

interview

how to dress right to get a promotion

how to dress

right in the workplace and that’s that

funny for me

because i thought who decides

what’s right i didn’t know that there

was a wrong way to dress in order to be

successful

now i went to this article and college

recruiter on the first page of google

says avoid excessive

everything that includes but is not

limited to

and i quote flashy jewelry sparkly eye

shadow bad ties bold ties

colorful patterns and fun socks

in fact their overarching advice for

anyone who wants to

get a job be promotable and have success

in their career

is to wear a suit

i started to think about how many people

i know that are

wonderfully wildly remarkably talented

in different ways and i thought about

these people who have

winged eyeliner natural hair tattoos

piercings curly hair oh my goodness the

nerve

being a blonde i have blonde friends who

are wildly successful and

so talented and the truth is

creativity comes in many

packages i think one of the big problems

with our society today

is that we are laying the burden on job

applicants

and people who want to advance in their

career

we’re asking them to ask the question

how do i

dress right for a corporate success

story

but what we need to do is start laying

the burden

on employers the question that should

be asked is how do we find

amazing talent that may not fit the mold

of conventional professionalism

which brought me to my next point you

see

i love communicating i love

connecting with people i love creating

amazing

powerful strategies that grow a brand

significantly profitably and

using some of the really cool trends

that are available on social media today

what i don’t love is creating

powerpoints

or having to type up reports or

spreadsheet anything but yet i see

wonderful creatives and visionaries

being asked

to create powerpoint presentations with

not

too much energy put into them

i see amazing creatives

being lost in the process of having to

fill out a spreadsheet

and i really started to think about this

process

in corporate and in our jobs

one question that i had is what is most

important

is it that presentation of information

is made to be aesthetically pleasing or

is it that it gets the job

done in fact throughout my entire

marketing career one of the things

that’s been the most shocking

not only to our clients but to our team

and to the people that i teach

is that it is very rarely the most

aesthetically pleasing marketing

campaigns

that get the best results the greatest

return the most growth

ultimately the most profitable campaigns

have the necessary elements but aren’t

always presented

in an aesthetically pleasing way the

question we need to ask ourselves

is is the necessary information here

and that is far more important than

making sure

that our powerpoint presentations are

aesthetically pleasing

if someone wants aesthetically pleasing

they can spend some time on instagram

in fact most architects and engineers

actually write all of their notes in

complete

caps lock and that’s because they’re

focusing on

exactly what is needed in order to get

the job

done they’re not focused on pretty

pretty is the final product

it doesn’t need to be so in the

presentation of the data

megan merkel recently was interviewed by

oprah

and she shared a story that

was very controversial she shared a lot

of stories that were very controversial

but one that i want to highlight here

was a time when she was

advised to be 50 percent

less now here’s the thing when i sat

down and watched that interview

my immediate thought was i’m not shocked

i’ve heard similar sentiments from

co-workers

bosses prospective clients and even team

members

i’ve heard this over and over again to

be

less to not seem so excited to not be so

bubbly

to not make a fool of myself

people don’t take silly girls seriously

but so many other people resonated with

that message

because i’m not the first neither was

megan who has been told to tone

themselves down

and to be less of themselves in order to

be more

acceptable to the corporate foundation

you may have been told to use less

emojis

no emojis no exclamation points

there are entire tick tock accounts that

are dedicated to

explaining how boring emails have become

in the workplace

right we’ll circle back to that later

my question is this when you are

hiring and building a culture for your

workplace

are you looking for robots

assembly line automated humans to

perform

a task a certain way according to what

you believe

is exactly how a certain person would do

it

or are you actually interested in

diversity

instead of trying to make someone fit

the mold of the one personality that

corporate has deemed

acceptable or potentially successful

what if instead employers begin

spending time studying the different

personality types

disc kobe myers-briggs enneagram these

are

all amazing ways to learn about all of

the different kinds of humans that there

are

and how they act under stress because

it’s not the same

as what corporate expects us all to be

professionalism is killing creativity

thank you for coming to my tedx talk