I walked toward the elevator with the executive of a firm that had brought me in to conduct a team-building workshop. I’m accustomed to a lot of questions, and even the occasional criticism of my work when I first meet people and take pride in the way it challenges my clients, but rarely do I get an opportunity like I did on this day.
He was in a hurry, but he wanted to share that he didn’t believe in what I was doing. The elevator was a perfect place for our conversation. He pushed the down button, and he and I had a few moments of undisturbed time together.
“I don’t believe that you should be friends with your employees,” he told me. “There is no place for ‘the personal’ in the workplace.”
He is not alone in that thought. Many CEOs feel uncomfortable bringing anything personal into a professional environment. This executive ducked out of the elevator, and before the doors closed, left me with his closing message.
“You can’t show them your weakness.”
How wrong he is. No one benefits in an environment where leadership and team members are forced to suppress their personal lives – to pretend they don’t exist.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who knows better than anyone the benefit of allowing “the personal” in a corporate environment, writes in her book, Option B, “By staying silent, we often isolate family, friends and co-workers.”
Negativity thrives in silence. Forcing silence, even subtly, sends a clear message that your people’s opinion doesn’t matter to you. We all have an autobiography we are writing in our heads. This is our narrative, our personal narrative. The ability to express this narrative allows for self-discovery and, in many cases, is the only opportunity to discover weaknesses or faults that were initially ignored or hidden.
Another executive in this same firm did take part in the training and bought in completely. He shared with the group that he has trouble sleeping. He rarely verbalized this problem and, prior to our work together, would never have considered speaking about it in a professional setting. During our time together, I asked him if he was holding himself back from sharing anything else. I posited that suppressing emotions and avoiding dealing with our struggles can lead to excessive rumination, anxiety and insomnia.
He responded by sharing more details in front of the larger group. A short while earlier, a close family member had passed at a very young age. He had never properly grieved, and he found difficulty expressing even positive emotions such as gratitude and appreciation for his loved ones. Doing so in a public setting allowed him to see the genuine care and appreciation his co-workers had for him and, in turn, gave them permission to express what was on their mind.
Furthermore, the public setting allows for incredible team building because co-workers become intrinsically connected to the speaker’s narrative. They join the process, and as such, a community is formed within the workplace. It allows others to open up about their struggles, obstacles, challenges and triumphs.
Companies that have an aversion to “the personal” do so at a steep cost, because it is in our vulnerabilities that we give others an opportunity to connect with us. We can all relate to the quest.
I wasn’t surprised when a few days later, I received a note from this participant that he had the best night’s sleep he had had in some time. No doubt, him being well-rested benefits the company.
This isn’t an anomaly. I’ve worked with many employees who were unable to speak, but once they did, they and their company were better off for it. Vulnerability without structure is chaos, but vulnerability with structure is power. You may find a whole world open up to you if you share your story with your co-workers in the right way.
“The personal” absolutely belongs. It belongs because it matters to your people, and your people matter to the company.
There are hundreds of thousands of employees who feel like they don’t matter. They work for CEOs who are living in a bygone era where fear is the great motivator. Don’t be that person. And if you are that person, don’t be surprised when you find out that your employees hate working for you.
