Sitting aside a fire in a rustic cabin alongside a mountain lake elicits different emotions than strolling the busy sidewalks of Times Square. The impact an environment has on our attitudes, behaviors, and overall experience is undeniable. While we may bring our same selves wherever we go, different aspects of us show up once we’re there. In this way, there is truth to the phrase nature vs. nurture. We grow and take shape within different contexts and many times there are environments that seem more favorable to us than others.
The same can be said of virtual workspaces. For some, the structured solitude is an opportunity to show off strong individual accomplishments while tucked away from in-person distractions. For others, the lack of randomized encounters and lessened opportunities for tackling problems together creates a void that can be impossible to fill. While it’s true that over time we all normalize to new environments, for some it can take much longer and at the end of the road, they’ll learn to rely on new strengths and potentially contribute in a very different way.
Prism highlights your unique preferences in such a way that your Portrait can be used to assess key aspects of yourself as you adapt to new environments. For instance, Versatile personalities are highly drawn to groups. The virtual distance created by a remote work experience can leave those people scrambling to fill a gap left by the lack of social experiences. Inversely, Adaptable people prefer one-on-one interactions and may benefit from the increased interpersonal aspects of remote work.
The truth is that there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to life experiences. Everyone adjusts differently when the rules of the game change.
This week, spend some time in consideration of your own experiences. Revisit your Prism Portrait and look for clues that may contribute to how you’ve felt about changes occurring in your life over the past year. We recommend going scale-by-scale to look for strong areas of definition (70% or higher). Then, assess how your needs associated with that area are being met, or not. You may just find an insight into yourself that was there all along and just needed some attention.
“Adversity provides opportunities for understanding the world and ourselves.”
– Michael G Sawaya
Author
by Adam Schneider
Adam Schneider is SurePeople's Head of Content, leading the end-to-end enterprise-level content strategy, production, and management for a global platform ecosystem. At the core of his practice, he's a scientist with a passion for storytelling. At the core of his Prism, he's a double Catalyst with a passion for people.
Do you have an idea you want to share with an empowered community of self-aware professionals? If you’d like to contribute an idea or article to ‘In The Flow of Work’ on the Evolve blog, just send us a message or submit a post to our Head of Content, Adam Schneider
