As I was wait­ing for a vir­tu­al in­ter­view with for­mer trade min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath to be­gin last Wednes­day, my eyes were drawn to a beau­ti­ful paint­ing hang­ing be­hind him on the wall over his right shoul­der.

With a few min­utes left be­fore the of­fi­cial start of the show, which was go­ing to be broad­cast live on tele­vi­sion, I asked him about that paint­ing.

Mr Bharath ex­plained it was part of his per­son­al col­lec­tion from his favourite artist.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the artist’s name has since slipped out of my mind, and for that, I am gen­uine­ly sor­ry.

Mr Bharath is no stranger to the na­tion­al spot­light af­ter years of pub­lic ser­vice and po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions.

Yet, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, a Google search for “who is Vas­ant Bharath’s favourite artist” proved fu­tile.

There were no re­sults about Bharath’s love of art.

One of the things that the COVID pan­dem­ic and the re­sul­tant in­crease in the de­pen­den­cy on tech­nol­o­gy has done is give us a peek in­to the homes and lives of peo­ple in a way we did not have be­fore.

It’s a por­tal in­to the per­son­al lives of peo­ple with whom we may have on­ly had a pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship.

This is how I al­so found out about a for­mer col­league’s green thumb and gor­geous gar­den.

But apart from fass­ness, more im­por­tant­ly, these two sit­u­a­tions have re­mind­ed me that peo­ple are not one-di­men­sion­al.

They nev­er were, and they have nev­er been.

Al­though far too of­ten we, my­self in­clud­ed, tend to place peo­ple in­to box­es and la­bel them, this is both un­for­tu­nate and un­fair.

We are all mul­ti-faceted and com­plex.

Take, for ex­am­ple, Col­in Robin­son, who died in March at the age of 58.

For many years all I knew of Col­in was that he was a lo­cal gay rights ac­tivist and a very vo­cal one at that.

That was un­til I called him one day for an in­ter­view, and we spoke for a bit.

Then I found out Col­in had placed first in the coun­try when he wrote the com­mon en­trance ex­am, won a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship to at­tend Yale Uni­ver­si­ty be­fore drop­ping out and com­plet­ing his un­der­grad de­gree at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

And still, that was not all that Col­in was. He was al­so a po­et and au­thor, and much more.

When we box peo­ple in­to one di­men­sion and fail to un­der­stand that they, like us, are al­so a mix of messy and mag­nif­i­cent, we are sell­ing them short.

In this vein, I ap­plaud Sco­tia­bank T&T for tak­ing a bold step this week with its lat­est ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign.

The so­cial me­dia cam­paign, which start­ed on Mon­day, fea­tures six proud mem­bers of the LGBTQIA com­mu­ni­ty ed­u­cat­ing us on the var­i­ous dif­fi­cul­ties they have ex­pe­ri­enced.

They end­ed with one voice:

“But when I can fo­cus on op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­stead of bar­ri­ers. When I can cel­e­brate who I love just like every­one else. When I know I be­long. When I feel like I be­long. I can be my whole self.”

As a strong show of sup­port, for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball team skip­per Ken­wyne Jones al­so added his voice as an al­ly:

Jones ends with the state­ment:

“In­clu­sion be­gins with all of us. We all need to em­brace and re­spect each oth­er be­cause when every­one can be their whole self, we all thrive.”

A bold step from the bank, the par­tic­i­pants, and Jones.

But un­der­stand­ing and re­spect­ing in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty is not on­ly for cus­tomers.

Em­ploy­ers and team lead­ers al­so need to un­der­stand that staff are not just one thing.

Every­one is unique.

So man­age­ment can­not be a one-size-fits-all ap­proach.

Yes, it would be best if you had an over­all team di­rec­tion and every­one work­ing to­geth­er.

But when you are work­ing on the big­ger pic­ture, in­di­vid­u­als mat­ter the most and we are all pro­grammed dif­fer­ent­ly.

Some­times what is need­ed is less of a macro-lev­el ap­proach to one that is more on an in­di­vid­ual lev­el.

And this is why Phil Jack­son could have got­ten the best out of the leg­endary Chica­go Bulls with two op­pos­ing per­son­al­i­ties in Michael Jor­dan and Den­nis Rod­man.

Jack­son worked with in­di­vid­u­als and their per­son­al­i­ties so that they were able to cap­ture a three-peat.

How else can you ex­plain Rod­man be­ing grant­ed a Las Ve­gas va­ca­tion in the mid­dle of the sea­son?

On an em­ploy­ee lev­el, we have seen a vis­i­ble shift in the way we view work.

The pan­dem­ic has dis­rupt­ed the labour mar­ket in many ways. No longer one di­men­sion­al, a sec­ond job or side hus­tle has be­come a ne­ces­si­ty.

From hy­dro­pon­ic gar­den­ing to on­line trad­ing, the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing COVID-19 has pro­vid­ed an im­pe­tus for en­tre­pre­neur­ship, tap­ping in­to our mul­ti-di­men­sion­al self.