Don't Bring Your "Whole Self" to Work—Bring Your Strongest Self

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. of America for a reason. With SUVs made to move with your rhythm. The versatile Equinox tackles your entire day. The spacious Traverse fits your crew and your whole weekend. And tracks bring style with value you can count on. All infused with tech that has your back. So your drive always hits the right chord. Chevrolet. Together let's drive. Bring your whole self to work. It's not very good advice for leaders, especially not for senior executives. I'm Dr. Thomas Chamorro-Premusic. I study how personality and leadership impact organizations. And decades of research have shown that the higher you are in an organizational hierarchy or ladder, basically the more power and seniority you have, the less likely you are to care about how your behavior impact others.

1:23This is of course a problem. Now there are three main reasons for not wanting leaders to bring their whole self to work. The first is that oversharing dilutes authority. If you're a leader you're not paid for sharing your emotions with others or forcing others to tune into your feelings. You're also not paid for imposing your unfiltered or uncensored self on others. Rather you're paid for driving high performance in a team. And this is generally achieved if you're capable of strategically concealing certain emotions to the benefit or in the interest of the team. The second reason is that personal values can actually divide teams.

2:04It is nice the idea that you should always be true to your values and core beliefs, but if you're a leader and your values are opposite to those of your team, you might actually end up alienating your team members. Rather than doing that, leaders will be much more effective if they're capable of questioning their own values and being open to other people's values and particularly unifying their teams, helping people who don't share the same values to work together. The third reason is that, well, everybody has a dark side. The idea that we should bring our whole self to work is not sustainable if you think that our whole self might include argumentative me, grumpy me, impulsive me.

2:47leaders are no exempt from these undesirable and counterproductive tendencies that mature human beings learn to keep in check in the interest of building and maintaining effective and positive pro-social relationships with others. So bring your whole self to work minus those negative tendencies which you can leave at home, although quite frankly I feel sorry for the people that are still at home if you leave them with those.

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