Should you bring your whole self to work?
If the idea of bringing your whole self to work gets you a little dreamy-eyed, you’re not alone. Job postings reflect this powerful trend in current thinking about the kind of workplace talented employees are seeking. But is bringing your whole self to work recommended?
Gail Golden, business management consultant, psychologist and author, says probably not. Based in Chicago, Golden lived and worked in London, Ontario for over 20 years. She says, some things just don’t belong in the workplace, such as:
• Sexual feelings for a co-worker. The odds are high that sooner or later you’ll meet someone at work that you find extra sexy. “That’s the real you. That’s authentic. And you’d better not bring it to work.”
• Strong religious beliefs. “It may be your religious belief that you should convert everybody else to your religion. You shouldn’t bring that to work even though it’s important to you.”
• Using profanity. For some employees, swearing or being vulgar is part of everyday life. It may be hard to flip the switch in the workplace, but it is necessary.
• Using alcohol or other substances. Having a drink socially is widely accepted in society, butconsuming alcohol or mind-altering substances at work is not regular practice.
Inevitably, the workplace persona and the home/social persona don’t fully align. But beyond these common breaches of professionalism, there are more complex layers to this issue.
EMPLOYEE ACTIVISM AND POLITICS
Let’s say you want to bring your activist or political self to work. Several tech giants have recently sent clear messages. Basecamp, a productivity software company, banned workplace conversations about politics, and about a third of their employees quit. “Every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant,” wrote Jason Fried, Basecamp’s chief executive, in a blog post.
Netflix told employees not to bring their personal political selves to work. They also told anyone who disagrees with their programming to quit. You can bring some personality to work, just not your whole self. Coinbase, a cryptocurrency platform, told people who want to be activism-focused that they might be better off elsewhere. Sixty people quit.
As Golden says, so much depends on company culture. “There are chunks of myself that just don’t belong in the workplace. At worst they’re really destructive to the workplace, at best they’re distracting.”
PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL VULNERABILITY
Professional vulnerability as a way of learning more about the job should be commended. Vulnerability that involves speaking up about something in the company may or may not be rewarded. If it fosters creativity and serves the company mission, it will likely be rewarded. If it threatens management, it may not. The recent termination of CTVS Lisa Laflamme is an example of the latter, according to an insider.
Again, much depends on culture. “There are company cultures where it’s all about being tough and ‘nothing stops me or gets me down’,” says Golden. “Sales cultures are sometimes like that. ‘I’m going to sell. Maybe I had a bad day yesterday, but I’m not going to think about it. Today is a new day, and it’s go go go.’ In those cultures, where everybody is putting on the same jacket, vulnerability may not serve you all that well.”
When it comes to personal vulnerability, there’s a long history of work environments that stifled people by insisting they must hide who they really are, whether it’s race, age, sexual preference — even whether they plan to have children or not. These attitudes are toxic and diminish employee engagement and productivity.
When Golden’s first grandchild was born, she was hesitant to tell anybody at work. She feared the potential labels and stereotypes. But ultimately, she decided to be open about this important and joyful part of her life. “I talk about it, not in the middle of a meeting, but over coffee,” she says. “This is an example of being properly authentic in the workplace.”
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
A great many companies are trying very hard to recruit in new ways that bring in more diverse candidates. “For all kinds of reasons that just makes a whole lot of sense. It’s the right thing to do,” says Golden. “And business-wise it’s also the smart thing to do if your employees mirror your customers in terms of their racial, ethnic and economic distribution.”
However, some of the messaging amounts to facadism — saying the right thing without the action to back it up. “I see a lot of companies that are just doing window dressing. They change their website and think that makes them a diverse company,” Golden observes. And many hires for diversity are soon expected to squelch the very thing they were hired for, and blend in.
Clearly, the advice to bring our whole self to work cannot be universally applied. The topic presents many variables and is subject to interpretation. We need workplace conditions to support it.
Golden says the key is to bring your best self to work. Doing so creates harmonious relationships, excellent work, and the satisfaction of a job well done.
Thriving in today’s workplace may well require a bit more detective work into prospective employers to protect one’s professional and psychological safety.
Golden recommends that “Workplaces try to make various diverse people feel that they can bring a lot of who they are to work and that they don’t have to look and sound exactly like everybody else.”