Conventional career advice overwhelmingly teaches that office-politicking extroverts are best set up for success. As a result, if you’re offbeat, you’ve probably felt that the parts of your personality that seem out of sync are weaknesses you need to overcome. 

What companies really need a...

• Your unique point of view is a strength, not a weakness. 
• Your sensitivity is what allows you to read a room and, ostensibly, play to it. 
• Your emotional intensity/curmudgeonly nature/crippling social anxiety/outsider status means you’re not constantly trying to curry favour ...

So you hate networking, the small talk gives you hives and you find yourself in a state of panic over professional events. All of this may make you may feel like you’re alone at work. You aren’t. You just haven’t identified your people yet. 

The awkward moments you experience on a regular b...

The impulse to want to fake it, to be more poised, polished or more like what you perceive all those #bosses on Instagram to be, is powerful — especially if you’ve spent a lifetime feeling odd. But pretending to be something you’re not in a new job, faking skills or contorting yourself to gain re...

For many of us, the biggest obstacle in the way of our success is the noise we create in our own heads: psyching ourselves out, telling ourselves we can’t do it, distracting ourselves with problems that don’t necessarily exist outside our minds. For those of us who experience these thoughts, lear...

Focus on the value and strengths you bring in this moment, even with all of your perceived flaws. 

Identify what it is about work that makes you feel anxious. Learn to push through this anxiety instead of running away from it. A daily medit...