Bring your whole self to work

As you may have noticed, we moved to Hawaii full-time. I initially thought getting back into the corporate world was a priority, but the more settled we get the more I’d rather stay here. That means figuring out what’s next for me. As such, I’ve begun conducting a little market research around influencing and communication in the workplace. In one of those conversations, the individual I was interviewing brought up their frustration with communication in their organization. The following was expressed:

“What does bringing your whole self to work mean? I understand it’s important for Gen Z’s and Millennials, but I feel it’s being used as an excuse for poor grammar in emails or to be confrontational in a group setting. It is frustrating because I’m doing my best to navigate this new environment. Am I just being too conservative?”

Though I wanted to respond in the moment, I was just listening and data gathering, but here is my take.

Is it OK to bring your whole self to work?

First, let me address this topic from the corporate/leadership perspective. At Ridgeline we had 5 generations of humans at work. Employees were at various life stages, coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and experiences. It was (and still is) a true melting pot where people felt comfortable bringing their whole selves to work! It is something I am truly proud of. The way we fostered this kind of environment was by getting clear about what was important to us. We not only defined values, but also key operating principles. For example, our founder is a stickler for grammar and spelling. Any official company communications were vetted and edited before being sent out. They were sent via email, to show the official nature of the post. Now, we were also realistic in knowing many employees rarely checked their email, and we would post on an official Slack channel as well, to help capture the range of employees and the ways they were used to consuming information. Other messages meant for smaller audiences, were just posted in Slack. They often included tons of emojis, acronyms, and grammatical errors, but that was fine – our operating principle was clear – and though it may have bugged some people, as a leadership team we knew where we wanted to push and where we were ok with letting people “be themselves”.

Second, from the employee perspective, YES, you can bring your whole self to work. Also, remember that in each organization there are implicit and explicit rules. Whether you like it or not, every company is founded and run by human beings, and as such, they have values, beliefs, and preferences on how things are done. I once had a CEO that could not stand seeing the parking lot empty on Fridays. He felt that people should not work from home that day and had us launch Friday bashes over the summer to force people into the office! In my opinion, I would have preferred to not do the Friday summer bashes and just tell people to be in the office on Friday and choose a different day to be remote. Regardless, within this culture, most people understood there was an implicit request and made the change.

Remember, you are welcome to do what you want but know humans are hard to change, and if you are going against the company norms, you might have an uphill battle at work. I don’t mean you should change who you are but perhaps choose your battles. For example, I can have a biting sense of humor and have been known to drop an f-bomb or two, however, I would never do those things at a board meeting. That said, if your current environment is stepping on core boundaries for you, then it might be time for you to opt-out and find a company where you feel you can bring your whole self to work – whatever that means for you. That’s the beauty of having options. Not everyone has them, but if you do, make the change!