7 Hidden Career Lessons From Hidden Figures

Warning: This post contains movie spoilers.

In addition to being this year’s top-grossing Oscar nominee, Hidden Figures took home the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast and earned Octavia Spencer best supporting actress nods at the Golden Globes and the Oscars. It’s a moving, poignant, and necessary movie, and one during which its characters learn a great deal. Forty-five years after it takes place, Hidden Figures also offers a great deal of wisdom for enterprising employees in the modern workplace.

Take, for example, the opening scene during which the three main characters, NASA employees played by Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, and Janelle Monáe, are stuck on the side of the road after their car breaks down on the way to work. A police officer pulls up and demands to see identification and know where the women are going, as if he can’t possibly imagine where three Black women might be headed during morning rush hour in 1961. Upon learning their destination is NASA, he is awed, only for Spencer’s character to check him, saying, “There are quite a few women working in the space program.” It’s then that the officer – and the audience – see a clear shift. While the officer could have said, “Go on your merry way. Bye,” he uses his privilege to do the right thing and help the women get to work on time.

There’s another moment later in the movie, when Kevin Costner tells his department, which is all male save for Henson’s character, Katherine Goble, and one other woman, to “call your wives" at the start of a late night at work. Goble, a single mother of three, looks around the room to find all of her male colleagues talking to their families. And in that moment, you can tell that she’s probably wondering if she’ll be able to do the same. After all, these same men have not taken kindly to a female, much less a Black female mathematician. However, in a small but powerful gesture, the man sitting across from Goble hangs up and simply passes the phone over to her.

It's little actions like these that create a culture of inclusion, both inside and outside of the workplace. Here are seven more hidden career lessons we can all learn from Hidden Figures.

1. When you’re offered a step up the ladder, extend the favor to those below you.

Spencer plays Dorothy Vaughan, who is now remembered for being one of the greatest minds at NASA and the first African-American woman to supervise a staff at the Langley Research Center. But at the time, she was doing the job of a supervisor without the title or pay. On top of that, machine computers were just being introduced, which meant she and her team of “human computers” would soon be out of a job. But rather than get discouraged, she took it upon herself to learn the programming language and then share what she’d learned with the rest of her department. When Vaughan was officially offered a promotion, she accepted on one condition: that her team come with her. You’ve got to admire how she identified the problem, came up with a plan, shared and executed it, and then when all of her hard work paid off, extended her hand back down the ladder to offer those behind her a boost, too.

2. The best solutions require diverse thinkers.

There’s a moment in the movie when Goble and her colleagues realize they’ve been looking at a math problem all wrong. Not until they get out of their individual bubbles and put their heads together do they realize they’re not even considering the most relevant information. Goble’s different background and perspective disrupted the group think of her White male colleagues. That's why diversity in the office is so important. If you have a bunch a people from similar backgrounds looking at a problem, they’re more likely to all come up with similar solutions. With a group of people from all different backgrounds, the solution is not only going to be better but also more inclusive and innovative, as it was in this case.

3. Use your privilege to advocate for others.

Using your voice can be hard. Sometimes, even when we try to assert ourselves, we are overlooked because of the color of our skin, our gender, or who we love. So if you are privileged enough to be someone who gets the ear of decision-makers, it is your responsibility to identify those who are being ignored and be their voice, too. You’ll not only promote inclusion, but also inspire others to be inclusive. When Kevin Costner’s character, Al Harrison (who is based on the real-life head of the Space Task Group at Langley Research Center), learns one of his employees is walking half a mile each way to the bathroom, he doesn’t go through a bureaucratic process to ask permission to make a change. Instead, he tears down the sign designating a ladies room as “colored.” Everyone – Blacks and Whites – saw this big, important guy at NASA say “no more” to segregation, and you better believe they took note.

4. Sometimes you have to break the rules.

Use the resources that are available to you, but also know that they may not be enough. And sometimes you have to find a way to gain access to more. At one point, Vaughan steals a book she needs from the library after the staff kicks her out for being in the Whites-only section. When handed a redacted document, Goble doesn’t have the information she needs to solve the problem. But rather than give up, she holds a piece of paper up to the light in order to decipher it. Often, achieving success and equality requires the use of unconventional, frowned-upon, or forbidden strategies.

5. Demand respect.

Goble repeatedly butts heads with her supervisor, played by Jim Parsons. When she adds her name to their reports, he demands she take it off. But still, every time, she adds it back. And when there’s a meeting that she wants to attend because it’s pertinent to her work, and he tells her no on the basis that there’s no precedent for women being there, she doesn’t give up. Instead, right in front of him, she goes above his head and makes her case to his boss. It’s a bold move, but guess what? It works. The thing is, being in the room matters. Don’t give up until you get there.

6 Fake it ‘til you make it.

When Monáe’s character, Mary Jackson, arrives at night school for her first engineering class, it’s clear that everyone is shocked she’s there. I loved that she walked right in and asserted her right to sit in the front row. The lesson: Stride confidently into places where you feel you deserve to be. If don’t act like you belong, people will treat you as if you don’t. Checking your imposter syndrome isn’t easy, but if you want people to acknowledge you, you’re going to have to try.

7. You can have it all, but not at the same time.

Early in Hidden Figures, Goble gets home late and misses dinner with her children. When she goes to tell them goodnight, one complains that Goble has been “gone for 300 hours.” Goble may feel guilty in that moment, but she doesn’t show it. Instead, she simply explains that Mommy has things to take care of. Monae’s character, Mary Jackson also deals with work-life balance issues; her husband is initially skeptical and unsupportive of her quest to become a NASA engineer – a feat that had never been accomplished by a woman before. He eventually is supportive of her ambitions, but the struggle of trying to reach new levels of success while maintaining the demands of home life is clear. That’s what work-life “balance” is. Sometimes our goals keep us away from our loved ones a little longer than we’d hoped. You can, however, eventually work that balance out with vision, patience, and perseverance. Case in point: Goble and Jackson.

*This post is part of The Well’s Hollywood package. Read more: How I Built The Life I'd Always Dreamed Of by Bevy Smith*