It's Time To Embrace Embarrassment With A Smile

Ever signed off VIP work emails with a kiss? We’ve all been there. Embrace red-face moments to power your 9–5

- Clare Baxter

Ask mates for cringey work stories and everyone will have something. One WH staffer tried making small talk with a guy in the lifts at her office once. “So, what do you do here?” she asked. Turns out he was the general manager of the company. Awks. Another kept confusing two similar looking colleagues – not too bad, until she congratulated the wrong one on being pregnant. Eesh. Then there’s that time one of us wore a jumpsuit to work, got undressed to go to the toilet, and accidentally left the door unlocked... all experiences you want to bury along with your first Hotmail username. But what if awkward moments could actually turn into something positive, such as a promotion or a pay rise, even? Intriguing...

Laughing matter

The idea that awkward sitches could end up working in your favour is one that journalist Melissa Dahl has spent the past two years researching and writing about for her new book, Cringeworthy: How to Make the Most of Uncomfortable Situations (Bantam Press, $35). Her aim? To work out the purpose of feeling awkward, and how we can use it to our advantage. “What I came to realise is these moments can instinctively shrink us. It’s uncomfortable, we don’t want to look stupid, we don’t want to embarrass ourselves,” Dahl says. “But if you can be brave enough to share [awkward moments] with other people or laugh at yourself, it can be a pretty uniting feeling.”