WorkLore

“During Covid we all did professional development because we were bored” 

Say what?!

When the moderator of a webinar said this my jaw dropped. 

That wasn’t my experience of March 2020 and beyond. 

Then again, my experience didn’t fit the narrative of that time. 

I didn’t start making bread. I didn’t take up a craft or any art. I didn’t gain weight. I didn’t do professional development. 

When the initial shut down hit, I was searching for work. Then I found it and took on a challenging new job made even more challenging by fully remote work. So my experience was different. 

It got me thinking of the power (and danger of a single story). 

Because a single story erases all the other stories. It suggests harmony and unity rather than diversity. It brings those who see the single story together but excludes those who don’t fit. 

I had always been impressed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” though I had never really thought about it beyond the literature that she is talking about. 

If you haven’t seen her talk, go watch it. 

She’s highly articulate about why it is important to tell stories of all kinds and to resist the temptation to reduce everything to a shared experience. How when we do so, we not only silence difference but can sow confusion as well. Her own stories in the talk are pretty amusing and really drive home the danger of a single story. 

That got me thinking. In our organizations, do we tell a single story of who we are? That we all think and feel the same way about our work? Is our strong culture just the storytelling power of a few? 

When we have a single story, is this always a good thing? 

What do you think?  

Btw: I would also recommend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, which is a thought provoking, moving, and powerfully written story of 1960s Nigeria.