Just a few short years ago, I used to joke around that being an engineer stole a little piece of my soul. I felt that it made me hard, and slightly uncaring.
That analytical piece of my mind was always on the go, and I rarely stopped what I was doing to really feel my feelings or think about how my actions at work were impacting other people.
As women in STEM, often we get sent the message that we have to be unfeeling to be successful in the careers that we’ve chosen.
But many of us chose these careers because we care about the impact our work has on the world. On people.
Being in STEM doesn’t require that you edit out your feelings and compassion. All STEM asks of you is that you apply logic to solve problems.
We can be ourselves at work and still be exceptional at out jobs. Emotional intelligence is recognized as one of the biggest predictors of success in any professional field.
Once I integrated my more emotional, intuitive side with my logical side, I found that I was even more effective in my work.
How are you editing out parts of your personality at work? How can we begin to re-integrate those pieces?