The Cambridge English dictionary defines a wallflower (the following is literally a copy paste) as a shy person, especially a girl or woman, who is frightened to involve herself in social activities and does not attract much interest or attention.
In the workplace, I would define a wallflower to be a relatively introvert person, who would be doing their job whilst not causing any issues but also not getting any development or career growth opportunities.
That person won’t be the one initiating multiple catch-ups to ask for promotions, more resourcing, or more anything. Generally, she would be a robust solid performer, but who does not necessarily communicate on their achievements. And definitely, she won’t be doing any requests like access to four terminals and ten screens, wireless headsets and more cpu than a bitcoin.
She will deliver but probably won’t get a promotion. She will not speak up, nor will she speak down.
She will be totally overlooked but also totally necessary, though of course never told so.
How many people do we all know in this category?
Some companies will send managers to gazillions of trainings on how to develop their teams, how to be inclusive, and how to be aware of introverts, and how to make sure everyone speaks in a meeting, and how to make sure to consider different styles.
Other companies will put together network events or publish compelling stories on the intranet on how this person who was just good at their jobs with no fuss climbed the ladder and was successful, accordingly to their predefined norms.
The sad truth is, many managers and companies love wallflowers and would like them to stay that way. No fuss, no suss. And the main approaches I have observed for these types of profiles, were something like:
- managers calling by name people in a meeting mechanically to make sure they checked the everyone-spoke at my meeting box (even if the person rightly was silent as had nothing to say).
- managers praising the wallflowers occasionally to look well in front of their own managers.
- managers adopting the “your role is actually really good and opportunity will come your way” (to translate into: I can’t really spare any of your time now so it’s beneficial to me that you stay where you are).
- in the best cases, managers offering some development in the form of coaching or leadership training but without follow ups to showcase what was learned.
What I have not seen much of is sunflowers. Or more specifically sunflower type behaviour.
First a bit of scientific background (this blog will also have the occasional actual science nugget):
A team led by Yasmine Meroz (a specialist in physics of plants and their behaviors, see links below) found that Sunflowers positioned themselves in fields and in how they grow to optimise the sunlight that each one of them gets.
Basically, to quote the magazine where I saw this fantastic information that sunflowers work as a team to share sunlight (The week junior, Science + Nature, issue 80) – and yes kids scientific magazine are a great source of information: “[Sunflowers] work together so that their leaves move out of the way of their neighbour’s shadow”
Imagine if we were all sunflowers in the workplace, that we were promoted not by silos but as teams and if success is defined by positive cooperation.
That means contributions to work from different profiles will be equally recognised, with managers leading by examples for everyone to be (or at least try to be) a sunflower.
One might say we are not long stemmed yellow plants that produce cooking oil. Fair enough.
However, if workplaces tried to provide platforms (aka “sun”) by challenging themselves to think whose leaves are obscuring whose light, there would be less boxed-in resources who might be truly capable and who can prove to be true leaders in new ways.
Instead of the usual victimisation (think along the lines of erroneous perceptions such as the poor shy lady that needs to be protected), the random inclusion or the patronising “well done” here and there, it is better to provide an opportunity to shine and get sunlight.
Opportunity and recognition can go a long way to contribute to the development to what I described as a workplace “wallflower” (and everyone please keep in mind this is just a metaphor to make a point, not aiming at denigrating anyone).
Often I have seen people grow from mid-levels silent zones into confident leaders or even entrepreneurs, when given an opportunity to take the lead or when encouraged positively.
In some examples, I have seen someone moving from wallflower to sunflower following a simple and coincidental managerial change (eg. micro-manager left and were replaced by a new more competent one).
The most successful practice I have seen is the flat hierarchy of setting expert teams to work together on a complex topic in such a way that cooperation was the only way to deliver.
Of course, there was an organizer, a writer, a numbers person, a thought leader, a good presenter, a negotiator etc, but the deliverable could not have been done by only one of them, and that was very transparent. So that, when the outcome achieved, the sun shone on everyone.
A lot of development comes also from encouraging peers to behave collectively and distributing equally the lead on projects or deliverables so that attaining an objective is viewed as a team work, which means optimising the sunlight for everyone is good for everyone.
Leaving a workplace wallflower to their own devices because they do not ask for much is the worst strategy. Finding the right ray to shine on them is the better one.
Sources:
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.031027
Physics World Mathematics and computation Research update: Sunflowers ‘dance’ together to share sunlight, 27 Aug 2024
A WOMAN IN THE CITY 