Hannah Georgas performs during the Juno Awards show in Regina in 2013.Reuters
This is the weekly Careers newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this e-mail newsletter to you, you can sign up for Globe Careers and all Globe newsletters here.
Kimiya Shokoohi is a writer and filmmaker based in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia.
In the ongoing debate of how we best interact with our peers and colleagues once life returns to normal, one question has stood out to me: How have successful artists been making it work remotely? After all, creative work involves many of the characteristics of remote work – secluded in a room (for the most part) with your thoughts, your knowledge, and your research.
Juno-award-winning singer-songwriter Hannah Georgas knows all too well about the process of wearing multiple hats and doing it on your own. But how does a self-proclaimed mostly introverted superstar make big moves in a world that seems to love extroversion?
“I’m a very selective extrovert,” Gerogas said. “When I have time to be alone I get to thrive in my creative process.”
Maybe there’s a case to be made for the important contribution of being both an introvert and an extrovert in the workplace, in the office and remote. When we see Georgas take to the stage or head out on her tours, it’s a result of the years of work she’s done in silence. Then she goes out to perform at big concerts, in stadiums, and for large crowds of people.
For Georgas, who released her fourth studio album “All that Emotion” last fall – the creative process comes through in thoughtful solitude and is then followed by collaboration with her producer. As in the case of her most recent album – produced by Aaron Dessner, who is also behind Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” – there is a back-and-forth that is supportive and collaborative, bouncing ideas off one another about how they can make the tracks better.
“The email communications are brief and the real diving into things wasn’t until we got together in a room,” she says.
A 2013 study from Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton school of Pennsylvania, found that as many as two-thirds of people don’t identify as extroverts or introverts. The personalities and preferences of many lay somewhere in between. Grant shows that personalities are fluid depending on the situation at hand. Big stars aren’t all big sounds and large crowds.
What I’m reading around the web
- Can a traumatic incident cause you to lose your memory? The answer is an emphatic yes. The co-creator of the show “Captain Planet” forgot who she was until she came back to being sound of mind during the pandemic. Read summoning “Captain Planet” in The New Yorker.
- Working remotely is hardly a new concept. Throwing it back to the nomadic lifestyle, Cassidy George explores how the popularity of the digital nomad movement and the depiction of a lifestyle as portrayed by Francis McDormand in Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, reveal more than just a woman choosing the nomadic lifestyle because she’s lost everything and needs nature. Read “the ancient origins of the new nomads” in BBC Culture.
- So you made lemonade, now what? In “How to sell more lemonade” for The New York Times Magazine, Maria Wollen explains how a 13-year-old is working to understand the science of how the brain works, specifically the human eye’s attraction to bright colours, to make her business successful.
More opinion from Globe Careers
Here’s how to think about the next steps in your career You have stuck with your role and/or organization through the pandemic. But there are now good career opportunities emerging, and you should be using this time to think about your needs, strengths and weaknesses, writes Peter Caven in the Globe’s Leadership Lab
As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, here’s how to prep for a hot talent market It might be time to consider entering the gig economy, raising your hand for a stretch assignment or even contemplate a career change, says Naomi Titleman Colla
More from the section
How can I help a co-worker get recategorized for better pay? In this week’s NinetoFive advice column, a reader asks how they can support a female colleague.
How ‘silent’ meetings can help everybody’s productivity A silent meeting seems like a contradiction in terms. But it’s one of many techniques consultants Graham Allcott and Hayley Watts tout.
Business leaders have a responsibility to lean into the difficult aspects of workplace diversity and inclusion Imagine you’re a hospital administrator and you have recently hired a new physician with a difficult-to-pronounce name: Adaeze Adebayo-Opeyemi. But she offers both you and her patients a seemingly easy option: “Just call me Dr. Daisy!” she says cheerfully. Do you?
Leadership Lab is a series where executives, experts and writers share their views and advice about the world of work. You can find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.
Have feedback for this newsletter? You can send us a note here.
Editor’s note: Correction: A previous version of this story had the wrong name of Hannah Georgas' fourth studio album. It is in fact "All that Emotion." The Globe regrets the error.