Key Traits of People with Thalassemia that make them Great Corporate Professionals
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories”
– Sun Tzu
The above quote from Sun Tzu’s book has been used and misused in most management help texts. Sun Tzu is suggesting that, if you know yourself and your enemy, you can win most battles. Knowing yourself means knowing about your strengths and your weaknesses. When you have a chronic disorder, like Thalassemia, everything may seem like a weakness. However, if one looks deeply enough, one may see that this is not the case.
Self Awareness and Strengths
Identifying one’s strength begins with self-awareness. A chronic disorder, like Thalassemia, is a big part of a person’s life. Thalassemia brings many challenges – most important being requiring significant healthcare. Growing up with Thalassemia makes one more self aware than others and cultivates key skills which are highly valued in the professional world.
Owing to the nature of its treatment, people with Thalassemia may be more forbearing and persevering to the general vicissitudes of life. Nurturing these traits and a little bit of ambition can enable a successful career and be on the path to a satisfying life.
Project Management
“Have you ever planned for the medicines you take along with their associated quantities or planned your schedule around blood transfusions?” Most people will draw a blank at these questions; however, not people with Thalassemia. Looking ahead in the future to determine things is what people with Thalassemia do on a regular. This is identical to the job role of a project manager. In living with a chronic condition that requires planned treatments, people with Thalassemia have a higher ability to anticipate and estimate future situations long before they come to fruition. These traits make them especially suitable for any administration or project management roles.
There have been volumes written about how anticipation helps project management and there are courses on online learning portals about forecasting and working with deadlines and challenges. A person with Thalassemia entering this field comes to realize soon enough how intrinsic these skills are to their day-to-day wellbeing. As such, people with Thalassemia can leverage these skills from the beginning.
Research
Another area for people with Thalassemia can be research oriented roles. Why ? Well, research is a space where a lot of emotional quotient learning comes into play. To be successful at researching anything, you need to empathize, look at various data sets, and make logical deductions. A person with Thalassemia looks at, reads, and analyzes blood and other test results on a frequent basis. They are able to track and monitor changes their health condition. This emotional quotient is very important in the research world – whether it be pursuing further studies (such as PhD) or courses or doing market or consumer research. Connecting the dots – a key research activity – may come easy for people with Thalassemia because they are already doing so on a day-to-day basis.
Endless Possibilities
This list of roles and professions goes on. The key skills of analysis, empathy, anticipation, and logical reasoning in today’s knowledge economy are very suited for people with Thalassemia, who can leverage their experiences of living with chronic illness and work to succeed in their careers as well.
Not every person is the same. Although we may not all be like Pete Sampras – a legendary tennis player with Thalassemia minor –there are opportunities for people with Thalassemia to not only lead fulfilling lives but also, thrive as best we can.
About the Author
Pratip Aditya is a Customer Success Manager working for a Boston based startup called solo.io. He has an MBA in Information Management and an engineering degree in Computer Science. He has been working for over 8 years in different management and business-oriented roles in India and recently moved to Toronto. He takes a keen interest in history, philosophy and finance. He's passionate about supporting and advocating for Thalassemia patients and inclusive healthcare without barriers.
Related Articles
