Unihuman or split personality?

 

Work can be a distraction from our private woes or worries. Going to the office – if you are back in the office now – can be a relief even if drudgery awaits, because it is a different setting, where you perhaps play a different role than you do on the home front. Granted, there are other anxieties here, especially if you feel the job is getting beyond you, the boss has unrealistic expectations, or you are not being promoted as fast as you deserve. But the kitchen-table concerns at least are left behind. This is one of the reasons why this fad for “bringing your whole self to work” is a bad idea. Leave the baggage at home, the cracked plates in the kitchen. I didn’t know about “bringing my whole self to work” but a piece by Douglas Murray in the Spectator magazine enlightened, as well as mystified, me. So this is a thing – has your organisation embraced it? There is a 2018 book by US author Mike Robbins which spells out the idea. You should not try to suppress those domestic concerns, or pretend to be a different, stronger person in the office. “Bringing our whole selves to work means acknowledging that we’re all vulnerable, imperfect human beings doing the best we can.”

Hmm. Douglas Murray is not impressed by this idea, and I tend to agree. Most of us have experienced people who bring all too much of themselves to work. That guy who spends all his time talking about Game of Thrones when you’re trying to meet a deadline; the girl who spends all day talking or texting friends about interpersonal outrages when there is serious stuff to be done. 

We are all ourselves all the time, but one of the satisfying things about human life is that we can choose which parts of ourselves to illuminate or advance at different times. Mark Zuckerberg seemed to think it was a good thing that social networks would dissolve boundaries between different parts of ourselves when he praised the wonders of the undivided self some years ago. The undivided self liberated by his social media platforms, that is. 

In marketing and professional settings the jury seems to be out on whether to be the one voice across all your outlets, or whether to tailor it to the occasion. Ashley Brown, working for a large science PR firm, told Forbes magazine that “as the number of platforms increase, it’s amazing to watch the way that we are adapting to multiple networks—and our ability to communicate and connect with different audiences through different voices online.”

Which is the opposite of what Zuckerberg was positing. Perhaps the answer for how to conduct ourselves is the same as the motto of the United States: E pluribus unum – Out of many, one.