The Challenges of Being a Woman in the Creative Industry

The creative industry has long been dominated by men, and women have often faced significant challenges in breaking through to the top. However, there are many talented women who have made a name for themselves in the field, and one such woman is Chris Poniac, an illustrator who recently landed her first salaried position. In an interview with an expert on television, Chris shared her journey and offered some valuable advice to aspiring creatives.

Working with Experienced Experts

Chris's experience working with experienced experts was a common theme in her story. She recalled a time when she worked with an older expert on the show who had a lot of experience, but struggled to adapt to the specific task at hand. Chris remembered feeling frustrated and trying to find ways to guide the expert towards a solution. However, she soon realized that this was not unique to her experience working with men, but rather a common challenge in working with any individual, regardless of their gender. "The biggest question about condescension and judgment is... if they're on the Spectrum or slightly neurodivergent that might not be the problem than you think it is," she said.

Condescending Behavior

Chris's experience highlighted the importance of being aware of condescending behavior in others. She noted that some people may become overly critical or dismissive, especially when working with individuals who are more emotionally sensitive or have different communication styles. "If they're highly emotional about their condescension and their judgment... that is a real problem," she said. It's essential to recognize these behaviors and take steps to address them in order to create a positive and productive work environment.

Navigating Career Paths

Chris also offered some valuable advice on navigating career paths. She emphasized the importance of paying attention to how you feel about your job and the company culture. "Pay lots of attention... pay attention to how the place feels to work in, cuz that will tell you kind of what manner you want to hold while working there," she said. Chris also stressed the need to find aspects of the job that you're interested in and pursuing them can help you grow as a professional.

Building Relationships

Chris's experience highlighted the importance of building relationships with colleagues and mentors. She noted that finding people who share your interests and values can be incredibly helpful in navigating the industry. "Look around and see about the aspects of the job that you like to learn more about, and then let that be known... don't be a bore about it," she said. Building these relationships can help you stay motivated and inspired, even when faced with challenges.

Finding Your Passion

Finally, Chris emphasized the importance of finding your passion in your work. She noted that this can be a difficult task, especially in industries where opportunities may be limited or competitive. However, she encouraged aspiring creatives to take the time to reflect on what they want to achieve in their careers and how much energy they're willing to put into it. "How do you want work to feel... how much energy do you want to it to take out of you during the course of a normal day... an extreme dream day?" she asked.

The Power of Prayer

Chris also shared her own personal practice, which has had a profound impact on her career and overall well-being. She noted that simply concentrating on something that's important to you can be incredibly powerful. "Prayer works because simply concentrating on something that's important to you on a daily basis or more than a daily basis is an incredibly powerful practice," she said.

Testing Membership: A New Opportunity

In conclusion, Chris Poniac's story highlights the importance of finding your passion in your work and building relationships with colleagues and mentors. Her experience working with experienced experts also emphasizes the need for empathy and understanding when working with individuals who may have different communication styles or needs. As we navigate our own careers, let us take inspiration from Chris's words of wisdom and find our own path to success.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enNorth of 60 maker North of 60 maker north of Route 60 North of the 60th parallel um hi Adam I really enjoy your channel and have been a fan for many years you've inspired my interner maker to come out of it shell and provided a lot of inspiration thank you you're welcome uh their question what sort of strategies do you have or use when working with someone who's incredibly knowledgeable and does excellent work but can come off as condescending and judgmental of your work when it wasn't done the way they would have done it haha yeah um you got to be careful with those people can I say something about being condescending someone's telling you something like oh I'm trying to fix this thing in my house this is a conversation that happens every day H Jim what are you doing well I'm trying to fix this thing in my house what are you doing well I have got this patch on the wall that's broken and trying to fix it and then da d d and it's really and then they describe to you how difficult it's been to execute this project and you might go huh why don't you just why don't you just there was this whole article I came across last year that was talking about the phrase why don't you just and how insulting that phrase is in almost every execution you could picture it in it's culturally not considered poor form but when you think about it it's a phrase we should all eliminate from our heads unless we're all confronted with the same problem at the same exact time because what you're saying when you say why don't you just is well I hear that you've been working on this problem hard but I believe you've missed something super obvious to new me and my fresh mind on this problem that certainly could be the case but do you really want to reveal it like this does you really want to say that to the person okay but working with someone who's knowledgeable but can come off as condescending and judgmental I'll go even further and say a difficulty with a person like this might be also that it's difficult to redirect them when they're doing something wrong anyone who is condescending and judgmental about the right way to do something is also going to be difficult to push off of their normal modus operandi now there are plenty of reasons why some employees normal modus operandi is what you want to keep going and burning but when you're working with people who so I want to zoom out and say someone who is condescending and judgmental to other people's work is at the very least not considering the consequences of their actions so they might be on the spectrum they might not take in the emotionality of conversations the way normal people do that's a very that that you know that is a classic Spectrum thing and so that begs the question are they emotional about their condescension and their judgment or are they unemotional about it um do they seem like they're being shitty are they enjoying being consenting because I've run into that ran into that a lot uh in Union shops where you know I was working and somebody who had a lot of seniority over me wasn't working I got lots of that like dripping condescension crap um or it could just be like a Jamie Hinman right where they're like they literally have a thing that they want to do and they're going to do it that way and every other way is dumb um both Jamie and I were guilty of of that kind of stance but I was telling so uh uh uh astronaut Katie Coleman who has a book coming out like this month and it's really worth your time because I wrote a blurb for it and I read it and it's amazing it made me cry mult mle times Katie Coleman is one of my favorite people in the world and she's an astronaut she came up through the astronaut Corp which is definitely a boy club let any woman astronaut tell you about it um and has talks has talked extensively and writes a lot in this book about the difficulties of being a woman in this space and she came here to the cave a few years ago and we were having we were hanging out had a lunch back here chatting and I was talking about having worked with an expert on the show who was really old they were an older expert they had a lot of experience but the thing that we were doing on the show was just a little bit outside their experiential range and I had a solution and I had to spend like a couple of hours just sort of slowly leading them to this solution even though it was my television show we brought this person in I couldn't tell them how to do their job that is absolutely would have harmed that day of shooting so I had to kind of just cajo them along and bring them along with me and I was telling Katie about this and she said well that sounds to me just like working with a man and I said M aopa Katie um uh ask any woman in your life about that story they will confirm this for you um yeah the biggest question about their condescension and judgment is um if if they're on the Spectrum or slightly neurod Divergent that might not be the problem than you that you think it is or if they're highly emotional about their condescension and their judgment that that is a real problem it's a problematic person to work around you have to be very careful around them uh they can take things as slights that uh that you don't intend um they can get mad even at you just getting better at what you do whereas yeah whereas uh the neurod Divergent folks who might behave in ways that seem condescending or judgment don't actually give a crap about Chris poniac this is lovely Chris poniac says I took your advice on portfolio improvements and landed my first salary job as an illustrator in Phoenix no less congratulations but I'm wondering it took so long to get here now what yeah so this is your first salaried position so you don't know how you fit into a an office environment um this is your first time working with other people in a salary position man like yeah what if now what okay I'm G to just give you a couple of key pieces of advice one is pay lots of attention pay attention to how the place feels to work in cuz that will tell you kind of what manner you want to hold while working there um pay attention to pay attention to aspects of the job that you're interested in like you'll get there let's say you're doing medical illustrations but there's some other part of the company that's doing Automotive illustrations and it turns out that's sort of a passion of yours that's the kind of thing to pay attention to because the stuff that you're interested in at work will be the stuff that you're going to be the best at it's just a default but getting there might be difficult um I when I first got to industrial Light Magic and I was working with Larry Tan on Newton Run's shuttle one of my first questions was who builds the spaceships around here if I want to build a spaceship who should I talk to and he was like talk to the Johns John Goodson and John Duncan um look around and see about the the aspects of the job that you like to learn more about and then let that be known don't be a bore about it don't keep asking for new opportunities necessarily you start by laying the groundwork they like I'm interested in that and I want to know more about that and also work hard to be nice to work with if there are people at work that you find hard to work with it's good practice to isolate why they're hard to work with and seek to not do that um congratulations Chris poniac and then the other thing that I often give as career advice is we we talk culturally about career advice as like what are you going to do what are the steps and I really like to give career advice of like how do you want work to feel how much energy do you want to it to take out of you during the course of a normal day an extreme dream day and how much time in the rest of your life do you want those are really important questions to answer you might not be able to obtain or get to the things that you desire about it but it's really important to know what you desire about it to inquire about that I'm fond of saying that prayer prayer works because simply concentrating on something that's important to you on a daily basis or more than a daily basis is an incredibly powerful practice thank you for watching that video are you as sick of the tosses to membership as I am good because here's a brand new one that I recorded today and it's nice and short there are three tiers to tested membership and they all offer awesome stuff find out about it by clicking the join link below we'll see you thereNorth of 60 maker North of 60 maker north of Route 60 North of the 60th parallel um hi Adam I really enjoy your channel and have been a fan for many years you've inspired my interner maker to come out of it shell and provided a lot of inspiration thank you you're welcome uh their question what sort of strategies do you have or use when working with someone who's incredibly knowledgeable and does excellent work but can come off as condescending and judgmental of your work when it wasn't done the way they would have done it haha yeah um you got to be careful with those people can I say something about being condescending someone's telling you something like oh I'm trying to fix this thing in my house this is a conversation that happens every day H Jim what are you doing well I'm trying to fix this thing in my house what are you doing well I have got this patch on the wall that's broken and trying to fix it and then da d d and it's really and then they describe to you how difficult it's been to execute this project and you might go huh why don't you just why don't you just there was this whole article I came across last year that was talking about the phrase why don't you just and how insulting that phrase is in almost every execution you could picture it in it's culturally not considered poor form but when you think about it it's a phrase we should all eliminate from our heads unless we're all confronted with the same problem at the same exact time because what you're saying when you say why don't you just is well I hear that you've been working on this problem hard but I believe you've missed something super obvious to new me and my fresh mind on this problem that certainly could be the case but do you really want to reveal it like this does you really want to say that to the person okay but working with someone who's knowledgeable but can come off as condescending and judgmental I'll go even further and say a difficulty with a person like this might be also that it's difficult to redirect them when they're doing something wrong anyone who is condescending and judgmental about the right way to do something is also going to be difficult to push off of their normal modus operandi now there are plenty of reasons why some employees normal modus operandi is what you want to keep going and burning but when you're working with people who so I want to zoom out and say someone who is condescending and judgmental to other people's work is at the very least not considering the consequences of their actions so they might be on the spectrum they might not take in the emotionality of conversations the way normal people do that's a very that that you know that is a classic Spectrum thing and so that begs the question are they emotional about their condescension and their judgment or are they unemotional about it um do they seem like they're being shitty are they enjoying being consenting because I've run into that ran into that a lot uh in Union shops where you know I was working and somebody who had a lot of seniority over me wasn't working I got lots of that like dripping condescension crap um or it could just be like a Jamie Hinman right where they're like they literally have a thing that they want to do and they're going to do it that way and every other way is dumb um both Jamie and I were guilty of of that kind of stance but I was telling so uh uh uh astronaut Katie Coleman who has a book coming out like this month and it's really worth your time because I wrote a blurb for it and I read it and it's amazing it made me cry mult mle times Katie Coleman is one of my favorite people in the world and she's an astronaut she came up through the astronaut Corp which is definitely a boy club let any woman astronaut tell you about it um and has talks has talked extensively and writes a lot in this book about the difficulties of being a woman in this space and she came here to the cave a few years ago and we were having we were hanging out had a lunch back here chatting and I was talking about having worked with an expert on the show who was really old they were an older expert they had a lot of experience but the thing that we were doing on the show was just a little bit outside their experiential range and I had a solution and I had to spend like a couple of hours just sort of slowly leading them to this solution even though it was my television show we brought this person in I couldn't tell them how to do their job that is absolutely would have harmed that day of shooting so I had to kind of just cajo them along and bring them along with me and I was telling Katie about this and she said well that sounds to me just like working with a man and I said M aopa Katie um uh ask any woman in your life about that story they will confirm this for you um yeah the biggest question about their condescension and judgment is um if if they're on the Spectrum or slightly neurod Divergent that might not be the problem than you that you think it is or if they're highly emotional about their condescension and their judgment that that is a real problem it's a problematic person to work around you have to be very careful around them uh they can take things as slights that uh that you don't intend um they can get mad even at you just getting better at what you do whereas yeah whereas uh the neurod Divergent folks who might behave in ways that seem condescending or judgment don't actually give a crap about Chris poniac this is lovely Chris poniac says I took your advice on portfolio improvements and landed my first salary job as an illustrator in Phoenix no less congratulations but I'm wondering it took so long to get here now what yeah so this is your first salaried position so you don't know how you fit into a an office environment um this is your first time working with other people in a salary position man like yeah what if now what okay I'm G to just give you a couple of key pieces of advice one is pay lots of attention pay attention to how the place feels to work in cuz that will tell you kind of what manner you want to hold while working there um pay attention to pay attention to aspects of the job that you're interested in like you'll get there let's say you're doing medical illustrations but there's some other part of the company that's doing Automotive illustrations and it turns out that's sort of a passion of yours that's the kind of thing to pay attention to because the stuff that you're interested in at work will be the stuff that you're going to be the best at it's just a default but getting there might be difficult um I when I first got to industrial Light Magic and I was working with Larry Tan on Newton Run's shuttle one of my first questions was who builds the spaceships around here if I want to build a spaceship who should I talk to and he was like talk to the Johns John Goodson and John Duncan um look around and see about the the aspects of the job that you like to learn more about and then let that be known don't be a bore about it don't keep asking for new opportunities necessarily you start by laying the groundwork they like I'm interested in that and I want to know more about that and also work hard to be nice to work with if there are people at work that you find hard to work with it's good practice to isolate why they're hard to work with and seek to not do that um congratulations Chris poniac and then the other thing that I often give as career advice is we we talk culturally about career advice as like what are you going to do what are the steps and I really like to give career advice of like how do you want work to feel how much energy do you want to it to take out of you during the course of a normal day an extreme dream day and how much time in the rest of your life do you want those are really important questions to answer you might not be able to obtain or get to the things that you desire about it but it's really important to know what you desire about it to inquire about that I'm fond of saying that prayer prayer works because simply concentrating on something that's important to you on a daily basis or more than a daily basis is an incredibly powerful practice thank you for watching that video are you as sick of the tosses to membership as I am good because here's a brand new one that I recorded today and it's nice and short there are three tiers to tested membership and they all offer awesome stuff find out about it by clicking the join link below we'll see you there\n"