How my background in the arts made me.
Some people play sports. I sport plays in my background.
The most dramatic team sport: Theatre.
Twice this week I ended up reflecting on my background in music and theatre and realizing (again) how much they have contributed to my business endeavors. And in a new realization, how they contributed to me feeling less pressure to “perform success” than some of my peers.
First, as one of their earlier profiles (I was #15), I was asked to contribute a video to celebrate Adventures in Syncopation publishing their 100th Perfect Pitch profile of an entrepreneurs who are also performing artists.
What I said in my profile:
How did your performing arts background supercharge your entrepreneurship? From my perspective the performing arts, whether theatre, choir, dance or crew for all of the above, provides as much opportunity to learn about teamwork and how every member of a team is a necessary contributor to a greater whole, as any sports activity. The performing arts also supercharge your capacity for innovation and creativity. Every show, every piece, every performance starts from nothing. You are building something that has never been seen before. Sometimes it's as ephemeral as improv, but even a show that goes on for hundreds of performances has a sense of freshness and unpredictability every single night. Thinking on your feet is as important in the arts as it is when running a start-up. Finally, the theatre is often a haven for so many different kinds of people. There is often a sense of heterogeneity to any team in the arts. In this era where people are finally starting to understand the value and need to prioritize diversity across numerous dimensions, a lifetime in the arts will have already prepared you to appreciate all the different types of thinkers and doers and dreamers and builders, and how you, in fact, need everyone to create magic.
All still rings true to me.
But then I also listened to a podcast episode featuring two friends, Morra Aarons-Mele and Laurie Ruettimann. Morra shared this excerpt on LinkedIn:
HR leader Laurie Ruettimann experienced this firsthand coming up in corporate America. "I started to conflate my identity with my job title," she explains. "I believed I had to wear a mask. I bought sensible slacks and cardigans, got French manicures, bobbed my hair, and covered my tattoos. I shopped at Talbot's petites, thinking this would make me look like the professional HR leader my boss wanted me to be. I convinced myself this mask would protect me while keeping my internal self intact. But eventually, work consumed me, and I forgot.
"Masking takes many forms – being thin, coloring our hair, wearing wigs, our fashion choices. While it helped me build a career and move from difficult circumstances to a privileged life, it came at a cost," she says.
And it triggered an idea I’d never really thought of before. I credit my experience pursuing education and then a career in the arts with a lot, but this conversation surfaced something new. It really made me think (again) about how formative it was for me to pursue a performance career until I was 26 and then decide to just totally switch it up. Having prepared to be nothing else, I was in some way liberated to try literally anything, I was a blank canvas...that's the narrative I usually tell. But also. This excerpt from Laurie reminded me of something a little less rosy.
There is such an issue around casting to "type" in performing spaces. You think theatre is going to be way different than film or TV, and perhaps it’s marginally different (and getting more different). but casting directors in the 80s were most definitely looking for “types.” And I didn't fit an established one. I remember the guy who ran the summer stock theatre where I earned my Equity card saying to me once, “Elisa, some day there will be ‘an Elisa type,’” which was his way of trying to be kind…something he didn’t strive for often, so although it might sound like the epitome of a backhanded compliment, I took it as the compliment I believe he meant it to be.
But bottom line: I had to accept very early that I was an out of the box choice. And that taught me very early that I would not be able to compete trying to be someone else…someone would always be better at it than I. And as I shifted into my business career I realized there were types there too. (I mean, you know just height alone is usually a good indicator of who’s going to be advanced, right?) Especially in finance and then in tech, being a short, plump, long-haired, ethnically-ambiguous WOMAN without a relevant college degree from a fancy college DID NOT FIT THE TYPE.
So I learned to believe people could just love me or leave me as I am, so to speak, because I don't look like the picture in the dictionary next to success. And the energy I might devote to trying to change that was much better spent in other ways.
It’s pretty late in life to get a new epiphany about a career you left decades ago and how it shaped you, but I will take it!
Were my other former performers at???? What did you take away from it?
What else is going on?
Out in the world
Podcast interview: Lynne d Johnson is a Web 2.0 OG. And a BlogHer OG. She spoke at the very first BlogHer Conference about Hip Hop Feminist Blogging. That was nearly 20 years ago, and she has been deep in the digital media game for all those years, both with her FT gig and now with a podcast she co-hosts with Tameka Kee called the Tech & Soul podcast. We talked about old school Web 2.0 days, the shift in the digital media/advertising industry, and of course Optionality. It was a fun decade-spanning conversation! Check it out:
TikTok’ing up a storm: For the election season I’ve mostly shifted from #BookTok to #PoliTok, often making videos giving advice on how to stay calm and focused, and not completely ducked into doomscrolling. Here’s one that particularly seemed to resonate. Hope it helps!
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Optionality
We’ve been busy! We hosted our first IRL event on October 2nd, co-hosting a book launch event for member Maria Ross’s book The Empathy Dilemma. Thanks go out to Extreme Networks and its women’s alliance for hosting us at their offices. We got to hear from Maria and also stories from other leaders int he room about what empathy (or lack thereof) looks like in action int he workplace. We want to do additional such IRL meet-ups and conversations regularly, and we want them to eventually be everywhere…if you or your company wants to host an insightful and engaging conversation about the workplace, leadership, culture, or any other Optionality-friendly topic, please reach out.
We had an awesome guest post from
to kick off a series on how to navigate a career crisis. I wrote a piece about “bringing your whole self to work” and if we even really want that. And if we do, who has the privilege to do that. And Jory struck a nerve per usual talking about how exhausting it is to “perform performance:”
In the live conversation realm, we hosted author, Global Head of Innovation for ServiceNow, and Optionality advisor Brian Solis for a fantastic conversation about his new book, Mindshift. This was perhaps my favorite story, about how Ikea leveraged automation to bring efficiency to one part of their business while re-skilling the workers in that area to launch an entire new line of revenue. Inspiring case study!
That’s it for today. Until next time, please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on any or all of the above. This is basically my blog now! And as always, I appreciate a share of Optionality and this newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
-E
I love this so much! Years after graduating, I wrote letters to the dean of the communication school at my university, advocating on behalf of the dance department for a dance minor. It was only an extracurricular activity for years and years and years. I wrote about how much a background in performance enabled so many skills. Like you say: teamwork, participation, commitment, showing up prepared and on time, taking responsibility — all traditionally associated with sports. Also, there were aspects of production that ended up factoring into a career in advertising in really tangible ways. It took the school 20 years, but they finally have a dance minor available and I think it’s wonderful!
This just gave me yet one more insight into how Elisa became Elisa. I always connected your performing background with your ability to speak and connect on stage, whether it was interviewing someone or even announcing the dang schedule. But you teased out a few more threads here that really ring true.