Colleagues who aren't comfortable

What about the people who don’t want to be authentic at work, who don’t want to bring their whole humanity to the workplace?

This is question several people have asked me this week.

What do you think? How would you respond to a colleague/friend/family member who doesn’t feel comfortable with you sharing what’s really going on with you?

My take: There already are plenty of places for people who just want a ‘job’ to work. If someone isn’t comfortable with their feelings, they are just compassionately being invited to a new way of being. If the culture and norms of a community don’t work for someone, I believe they are empowered to speak up about what would work better. Ironically, the tools and practices to help them do that might be the ones they might be afraid of adopting or learning more about. So, in deep compassion and love, there is always consideration for people. When it comes to conscious cultural change, it never hurts to listen and discover what people truly want. 

Very curious to hear your thoughts?

What keeps us from being Authentic at work?

I mean being honest, talking about what going on inside of us. I’m wondering why this is the norm in our workplaces. With our friends and family we can share our emotional lives and what we are experiencing.

What do you think?

My take is that people were told that their emotional experiences,  ‘what they are really thinking and feeling’ was not okay to share-at school, at work and sometimes in their families.
1) Perhaps the first step is being aware of our emotions (emotional Intelligence),
 2) the second step is having the words and language to speak about them clearly in a non-arguable way, and
 3) the third is having the courage to do so in cultures where this is not the norm yet.

Core of our Humanity

I believe that our businesses and organizations can be places where we can express the core of our humanity-sharing our thoughts, feelings and emotions. Where we don’t downplay what is going on inside of us; we harness that creative energy and use it to create collectively with others.

That would include saying what works for us, what feels right and when we aren’t excited about doing something. This would include conversation, real conversation about how to do things (not doing things because this is the way we’ve always done it) and providing ways for people to determine how they can best contribute in a workplace. In essence, this is the invitation for us to be creative, responsive and present to what is happening in the moment. Right now, so much is changing that if we don’t embrace our humanity at work it seems like we are headed towards being uber-efficient functioning bodies similar to machines. I don’t think that is why we are alive.  We are alive for the richness of being human-feeling, thinking, acting and they key to that is feeling, understanding and expressing our emotions.

And I sit here with deep compassion for where we are, I can see why we’ve downplayed our emotions and what we are feeling at work.  In the first businesses, they were built on relationships and trust.  Imagine the first county store, a tailor, a neighborhood doctor; they existed solely to make people’s lives better through their services. When businesses got bigger-commerce moved to more of a transactional model. So if a business wasn‘t efficient, another business did things in a way that was cheaper or faster which gradually encouraged the more relationship-oriented business to leave the marketplace. So the expression of our humanity pushed out of our work life. However, people adapted and just decided to express their emotional and authentic selves other places-at church, with their family and friends, and made work a place to earn a living. There is nothing wrong with that, just a decision that was accepted by many. So we evolved to expect that at work. However, some companies have a culture where relationships and trust differentiate them; Zappos comes to mind. They truly care about their customers (beyond making money).  Any others you know of?

I long to discover the ways we can express, share and use every part of our being to create at work and in life. The wonderful thing is, is that when we express our authentic self; we are using both hemispheres of our brain. Literally, our whole brain is functioning in harmony. That means, that when we aren’t expressing our emotions or what is going on inside of us (we could be unaware of this), we are only using one side of our brain. When this happens, we tend to over-rely on our left hemisphere. This is the part of the brain that is analytical, logical and tries to solve problems. However, if we tune in to what we are thinking, feeling (what is going on in our body) and needing, then we have access to much more information. Using our whole mind allows more information and energy to flow through our mind. This last paragraph is based on interpersonal neurobiology (Sarah Peyton and Daniel Siegel are great resources to learn more about this).

 Would love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas…