When it comes to the people you work with, what you see is rarely what you get.
I’ll never forget learning over lunch one day that an event professional I collaborated with had been smuggled out of a concentration camp as a baby.
Or being told by a designer during a conference happy hour that she had everything stolen from her family as a child and is now hyper-driven by money and security as a result.
Or knowing that dozens of friends and colleagues lost family members on 9/11.
Everyone has stories you don’t know. Everyone has events that have shaped their lives in profound ways. Whether or not they choose to share them with you is their business.
What is your business is treating everyone as though their stories – whether spoken out loud or not – matter.
Originally published February 2015
