What Is My Culturally Identity: Internalizing culture
My journey toward culturally
authentic leadership
Culture has a huge bearing on our identity
Where we grew up, family dynamics, the food, the clothes, the music we enjoy… everyone has a culture. I invite everyone with any and all identities to consider my experience below and think about how you can benefit from a similar reflective process.
Think way back in the spiderwebs of your memory and think about what you saw in your home, heard, valued, and were taught – the things you took in as a child, when you were a sponge. Some of those elements or facets you may happily embrace as your identity – others you may wish you could shed.
Culture shapes how we perceive the world and interact with others
As fully-fledged humans, it’s inevitable that we bring our identity, the culture we came from, and cultural expectations (how we expect the people around us to act, think, and communicate) to the workplace.
I’m currently working on an exciting project (stay tuned for announcements coming this fall!) that started many years ago as a personal reflection on how my culture informs how I show up at work. I’d love to introduce you to this work, I hope it encourages you to do the same.
My experience with internalizing my culture
After the tragic murder of George Floyd by police in May of 2020, I had a defining moment. While feeling hopeless at home with my two young children, I started to ask myself questions about my role in this movement and who I was as a person. This period gave me the time and space to deeply contemplate my identity and how I was showing up for my work, my family, and within society as a whole. I made it my responsibility to look at my own conditioning, what actions I’ve taken to assimilate and how I perpetuated bias.
I began slow and simple with my journal. My first exercise was to answer a series of reflection questions that I wanted to share as a good place to start:
Reflection questions
What aspects of your cultural identity inform how you behave? communicate? work?
What aspects of your cultural identity inform your relationships in and out of the workplace?
What kind of challenges and barriers do you see in the workplace given your cultural identity?
In what ways does your privilege impact your work and your relationships?
(Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo’s book So You Want to Talk About Race? for inspiring these prompts.)
As I found out, how you talk about your story with yourself and at your workplace can literally change your life.
“What is my cultural identity?”
On paper, this complicated question is easy to define. My father is from the Philippines, my mother is from Texas and I was born in California. Well, it’s not that simple. How I define my cultural identity unraveled itself in a series of journal entires around these topics:
Being a first generation, mixed-race Filipina
My religious upbringing
The legacy of family recipes
My privilege - what I was given and taught
Traveling the world as a English & Spanish speaking chameleon
This self-reflection went on for many months as I explored how these facets impacted my life, relationships in the workplace, how I related to people both similar and different than me. So many things started coming out.
I unveiled some very complicated reasons for my die-hard work ethic. From being a daughter of immigrants, to watching my mother establish a career in a male-dominated industry, to always trying to prove myself in predominantly white institutions.
I learned that I needed the camaraderie and collaboration of coworkers to feel engaged, because as an only child in an extremely social culture, I craved being part of a group environment.
I realized that making time for personal inquiry required patience and silence and I struggled with it.
Please keep in mind that this is my personal experience and everyone’s experience is and will be different. Should you decide to embark on a self-awareness practice like this one, know that your results will be different.
“How am I understood in the workplace?”
I then transitioned this reflection to my adult life and asked myself about how I’m being understood in the workplace. I believe that effective leaders are self-aware leaders. They’re conscious of their presence, their actions and behaviors and how all of those impact others around them. These self-aware leaders also understand how their cultural & familial identity (among other identities) influences how they show up in the workplace. I had to do this work myself and began with checking my privilege.
Privilege
I dedicated several pages in my journal to my privilege, which ended up being a list of the many advantages I have had that others do not. Saying this was a difficult process is an understatement. I had to dig deep into my identity to figure out how my privilege got me to where I am. Here’s some of what came out…
First, I examined my social privilege. I am an only child from a middle-class family and grew up in a somewhat stable home environment. I lived in my same home for my entire childhood and had many family members surround me for care and support. I attended Catholic private schools, I hold a Master’s Degree and have my own small business. Today, I live in a three bedroom home near the Pacific Ocean, have a vehicle to drive to work and have access to organic produce and grocery. Lastly, I have had the opportunity to travel to over 25 countries.
Next, I examined my physical privilege. I am a moderate brown-skinned multi-racial cisgender straight woman. I am non-disabled and neuro-typical. I’m also petite at 5’1”, conventionally attractive, have straight hair and have had consistent dental and orthodontic care since childhood.
After this reflection, I sat back. I looked at my words, I looked at this long list (longer than I ever imagined) of ways I am living my life from enormous privilege. My work was just beginning. I was now responsible for dismantling my privilege and continuing this inquiry on a regular basis. I never realized that having one home growing up brought me privilege. I never thought twice about how having access to a car, putting gas in it and driving to work every day was a privilege. The fact that I am able-bodied gives me the opportunity to have a career in teaching.
I realize that not everyone has these privileges and this sits heavy on my heart.
early career reflections
I slowly transitioned this process to reflect on my formative years in the workplace. Early in my career, all I wanted to do was “fit in.” I realize, decades later, that I’ve worn many masks to cover up and change who I really was. Being the new person or the young person on the team was uncomfortable, so my goal was to blend in, assimilate my company’s culture and prove that I was smart enough to be there. You would find me:
Keeping quiet during meetings and observing the room. I never wanted to rock the boat and stand out in front of my boss, so I held back my emotions and comments.
Making friends with my teammates and going to lunch to get to know them outside of work, but unwilling to open up to my manager to share non-work related details of my life.
Holding back stories of my travels abroad or my cultural background because the majority of my co-workers were white and had very different backgrounds than me. I assumed they’d never understand or want to hear my stories.
Today, the workplace is different and I’m different. Throughout the course of my career, I slowly broke open my shell. I took small steps to try speaking up, I built relationships with a few managers I could trust and I began sharing my culture stories more comfortably with confidence. The lesson I’ve learned is that I don’t have to be afraid of what people will think of me, I just need to be my authentic self.
You can begin this journal practice too
One thing to note is that timing is important. It’s an introspective process, and there may be other things in your life you need to attend to first, perhaps things that would hold you back from going deep here.
It’s a very individual decision. As you start journaling, it can feel very raw. You may find it hard to be honest with yourself, much less to talk about your process with a partner, mentor or leader.
You may have moments of self-consciousness like I did and ask yourself, “Am I Filipino enough? Am I Mexican enough? Am I smart enough? Will I fit in?”
Take your time. Talk about it when you’re ready. Or maybe you’re the kind of person who does this work best with a group – great! Stay tuned for a big announcement launching a new workshop coming this fall!
A final word of encouragement for leaders
I hope this challenges you to spend some time reflecting on the culture you carry with you – write things down, check your privilege, think about it, reflect on how it shows up at work and in your daily life. Expect it to be an ongoing process! I hope you find, as I have, the process of naming and embracing your culture and identity to be cathartic as well as fascinating. The last three years have been a constant evolution and I know it will be a lifelong journey.
If you’re interested in deepening your self-awareness and self-reflection practices, stay tuned for a big workshop announcement coming this fall.
Lead the way,
