Why Jason Collins matters for your career

Why Jason Collins matters for your career Jason Collins is a professional basketball player who just announced that hes gay. Its rare enough for a professional athlete to be openly gay that President Obama called him up to offer support, and former President Clinton tweeted his support, adding that hes known Jason Collins since he was friends with Chelsea Clinton at Stanford. Collins is a 12-year NBA veteran who has played for the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards and chose to come out in  the new edition of  Sports Illustrated  . He says, Im a 34-year-old NBA center. Im black. And Im gay.  I didnt set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, Im happy to start the conversation. Its a great conversation to have, because we all do better in our careers if we are honest about who we are. The research about the benefits of coming out at work is solid. Gay people get higher pay and have more stable careers if they come out at work. Because so much of career success is connecting with people, and secretive people are not likable. This is one of the reasons that I was so upset when I was coaching Cassie Boorn and she didnt tell me she was gay: because the best career advice I could give anyone who is gay is to find a place for  themselves  in the workworld where they can be themselves. You would not believe how many people I coach who are gay but dont tell me until the last ten minutes of the call. It would be fine if being gay is irrelevant to their career, but it almost always comes up, in passing, because we have to talk about your personal life to build a career plan that supports your personal life. So if you are systematically hiding that youre gay, then it is highly probable that the core of your career problem is that youre hiding. Because people who hide something that big from the world are usually hiding lots of other things as well. And the more you hide, the harder it is to find a job thats right for you. The story of Jason Collins is not just a story about being gay. Its a story about how, to some degree, each and every one of us is scared to be ourself at work. Each of us has something we are scared to own about ourselves because we are scared people wont like us. Were scared the top people in our field wont respect or like us. We each hide something that we think is particularly bad. And we all think, Other people might not need to hide this, but for me, its different. But really, if theres anyone who could say they have a special situation, its Collins. Hes in a field where he has to touch other men all the time. Hes in a profession thats notoriously homophobic. And he is a national figure but hes not used to dealing with the press in a personal way, so talking about all this publicly is out of his comfort zone. I have been working in the tech industry for most of my career. As a serial entrepreneur Ive had to figure out, each time, how much of myself to reveal to my co-founders, to my investors, to my employees. At one point, during my last startup, I was crying in the lobby of Chase Bank  because we ran out of money and none of my employees would get paid and it was the week before Christmas. Earlier in my career, I never would have written about that, because its very hard to get funding when you are crying and weak and desperate for money. No one wants to fund that kind of entrepreneur. But I wrote about it anyway, on my blog, and literally hundreds of entrepreneurs told me they had been there before, and they offered great ideas for getting through such a tough time. And my investors came through as well. Because what investors need, more than anything, is a founder who is dedicated and driven and genuine and honest. Thats what the NBA needs from Collins: dedicated, driven, genuine, and honest. And thats what people need from you. Some of you are still thinking youre not going to really be who you are. You want to keep the parts of you that are fun and enchanting and easy, while making the other, worse parts of you go away. But the truth is that no one is enchanting if they are not whole. I realized, late in my career, that one of the biggest reasons that I looked scary to some people was that I was hiding some fundamental things about me: like that I was taken away from my parents for abuse. I wanted it to not matter. I wanted to be past that. But everything matters. Everything is our lives is who we are. Jason Collins being gay will matter so little in two years. Well be past the hoopla. And so will he. Itll just be a part of who he is. Heres how I know: I was coaching a guy. And we were talking about how he and his wife were going to move to the East coast, and he needed a career transition strategy. At the end of the call, he told me, Hey, I have something to tell you. I said, At the end of the call? You have something new to tell me now? He said, Yeah. Well, I read how you said that so many people wait until the end of the call to tell you theyre gay. Oh no. Youre gay? Youre going to tell me youre gay? No. Im not gay. Im a transexual. Silence. I was shocked. Then I said, Are you done? Like, is it that you were born a woman and now youre a man? Yeah. I went through all the operations and everything. No one would guess Im a transexual. I just wanted to tell you. And we both laughed. Because its a funny riff on the constant problem of people being closeted and not telling me. But thats all it is funny. Because hes fine with who he is, and hes integrated his whole self into his life, and so its not possible for it to be a problem for his career. I wish that peace for Jason Collins and I wish it for all of us. Lets start today, being a little more honest about who we are. And bonus: Well make more money doing that. Really.