JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

We are not one dimensional

by

Joel Julien
1500 days ago
20210617

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored