Last week I wrote about how we respond to being “wrong” and I also wrote a posting for Discuss HR called To what extent is it really OK to be human in the workplace?  It seems to me that both postings touch a similar theme.  This is how I started my article:

We all agree (do we?) that emotional intelligence has a significant role to play in the workplace.  Words like “authenticity” and “integrity” are widely used and have a strong appeal with organisations looking to recruit people who display these qualities.  At the same time, in many organisations, people hold the belief that they have to show their best side in order to succeed and invest time and effort into creating a professional mask and identity.  To what extent is it really OK to be human in the workplace?

As early as 1973, Dr. David McClelland published a paper, Testing for competence rather than for intelligence, in which he argued that classic aptitude tests (the type that might, for example, predict performance in school exams) were a poor predictor of later performance in the workplace.  He posited the idea of testing for competencies – those attitudes, traits or behaviours that differentiate the more outstanding performers in a particular job.  McClelland’s ideas have since been widely tested in the workplace even whilst scientists have been making significant discoveries into the workings of the brain.

Daniel Goleman, himself a student of McClelland, has been widely credited with coining the term “emotional intelligence” and his book Working With Emotional Intelligence outlines a model for effectiveness in the workplace which draws significantly on the work of McClelland and others.  Emotional intelligence recognises that our effectiveness in the workplace reflects our ability to tune in and respond to the full range of information available to us, including our own emotions.

You might expect, then, a growing trend towards encouraging authentic self- expression in the workplace.  You might also expect that this would lead to higher levels of engagement at work.  You might even expect that this would be desirable to employers:  higher engagement leads to improved work outcomes as a result of increased discretionary effort.  But is it really so?  Working (as I do) as a coach to senior leaders I notice how often I am party to the sharing by clients of thoughts, feelings, desires that they hesitate to share with colleagues, even whilst they wish their colleagues would understand them better.  Surely there’s some paradox at work when all the research points to the benefits of such sharing and still, it’s not happening?

Reflecting on my own experience, I see some clues as to why this might be so.  I’ll be sharing some thoughts about this in the coming days.  Meantime, I wonder:  what has been your experience of being human in the workplace?