Let Your Lack of Perfection Show

Back in the day when I had a non-stop traveling job I got pretty used to living out of a suitcase. The hardest part of it was learning how to look professional for a whole week with one rolling suitcase when I had to see the same people for five days in a row. I worked with a woman who was always impeccably dressed which fit her never a hair out of place personality. She also was a stickler for perfection in all written and spoken presentations, which was scary for me.

Since she was my senior I was a little intimidated by her until one day she shared a traveling trick with me. She told me that she would take her oldest underwear on trips and throw it away rather than repack it to bring it home. My first thought was, ”We travel every day, that’s a lot of underwear.”

Since we traveled to nice places and stayed at the Four Seasons and the like my second thought was, “If I threw my oldest underwear away at the Ritz Carlton when the maid went to empty the trash she would think that some homeless person had broken into my room and thrown their underpants out.”

I tactfully, or as tactfully as I was capable of, tried to relay my thoughts to my colleague. She let me know that no homeless person would want what she was throwing away. Suddenly, this very buttoned-up person on the outside seemed much more like me on the inside.

I had imagined that everything about her was always perfect right down to her underwear, not that I had ever thought about her underwear. Knowing there is a chink in someone’s armor makes him or her human. Realizing their humanity makes relating to them easier. After learning that about her I was less intimidated by her and actually was able to relax and learn more easily from her.   She has no idea how she helped push me professionally by confessing that her old underwear was not worth bringing home.

I don’t travel for work like that anymore so I have probably built up a good collection of “not even worthy of homeless women” underpants, so I can’t take her advice literally anymore. But what I do try and do is let people in on the many chinks, cracks, folds and crumbling places in my armor so they can feel comfortable enough to maybe learn something from me. We all have things we can teach each other so please share your wisdom. I promise I won’t ask you about your underpants.