Advice

Stereotype-Fu: Be yourself!

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Continuing the series on dealing with stereotypes in your career, one thing people rarely consider is that you can fight the negative stereotypes you face as a fan, techhead, sports nut, etc. by BEING that role to the hilt.

If people hold stereotypes of you, it may be best to not worry about it and go around BEING that fan, b-movie fanatic, comic book reader, etc. to the hilt.  In short, be less repressed and more open about your interests and your geekery – without being aggressive.

This doesn't work in every situation – it won't work in the case of hostility, extreme negativity, and conflict.  This is more a tactic to help defuse more passive or just plain ignorant stereotyping by BEING the fan you are.

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Avoid the Peter Principle

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The Peter Principle is a famous idea that, simply, people get promoted until they're in a position they're simply not good at.  Too many people are promoted to their level of incompetence.

This is often used in many jokes, but it's actually something I take seriously.  I take it seriously as I've seen it in action.

I also take it seriously because it scares me, as it is even more important to career geeks and profans like us.  We, yes we, the cool and creative and hip and obsessive people are in even MORE danger of the Peter Principle affecting us.  We are, in short, in more danger of being promoted far beyond our level of competence.

The danger is that we often like what we do and can miss when we're bad at it.

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Stereotype-Fu – Draw Them In

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As I have noted ad nauseum (and as we've seen ad nauseum), stereotypes often raise their heads in the business/career world.  We, being fanboys, fangirls, geeks, otaku, metalheads, what have you, can face some pretty annoying stereotypes in our professional lives.  Dealing with it intelligently is a way to both keep our sanity – and we can always turn it around to our advantage.

One of the oddest cases of being stereotypes in the work world, from an interview to a client discussion, is when the people stereotyping us FIT the very stereotype they're inflicting on us.  The person that jokes about you being a game geek themselves can repeat dialogue from Final Fantasy 7 verbatim (with voices).  The person that jokes about your body piercings has enough metal in their body to make a toolkit.  The person who snubs your taste in emo music listens to songs so depressing they're banned in several countries.

This is annoying.  This is hypocritical.

THIS is a chance to engage in some stereotype-fu and turn the stereotyping to your advantage – by connecting with the person in a way that changes their views and relations to you.

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