Women at Work - Self-Disclosure at Work (and Behind the Mic)

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

In this special live episode, we share stories, research, and practical advice for strategic self-disclosure, and then take questions from the audience. Guest: Katherine Phillips. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. We've been making this show for a year now. We've bonded over the work for sure. We've come up with story ideas together, we've done interviews together, and we've written scripts together. But what's bonded us for life are the conversations we have in the studio among ourselves before we start talking on the record. What we say to each other in that windowless, soundproof room is sometimes silly, it's sometimes serious, and it's almost always about our personal lives. My roommate had

LASIK like 10 years ago and he hasn't had to wear them, but it does like wear. Are you referring to Philip as your roommate? No, no, no, my ex-roommate. And then I was driving home and I drove by a salon and it was open and I was like, do you have time to take me? Oh my God, Sarah, I have my haircuts planned for the next year. Oh, that's great. I actually plan my travel around them. We can cut loose because we know and trust each other, but we weren't this close from the beginning. We built intimacy and camaraderie little by little, and it's made us a happier, more effective team. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Nicole Torres.

I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. In this special episode, we're talking about self-disclosure at work and behind the microphone. We recorded this conversation live at the Work It Women's Podcast Festival in New York City. We talked about why sharing information about our personal lives without oversharing helps us build professional relationships. And we spent a lot of time on why those of us in the minority at work might hesitate to open up to our colleagues. One of the things that I do whenever I'm teaching, for instance, is I take about 15, sometimes 20 minutes at the beginning of my time with a group to let them get to know who I am.

Our guest expert was Catherine Phillips. She's a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. And our producer, Amanda Kersey, moderated the conversation. Again, thank you everybody for coming. I am excited to be talking about this process of relationship building that we do to make this show. It's an interesting process. There's so much that goes into it. And we're going to be talking practically some about how self-disclosure at work can really benefit you and the projects that you're working on too. So with that, we'll start. Kathy, could you talk about what some of the research says about self-disclosure in the workplace? So absolutely. So I've been doing research on diversity and inclusion in teams for the last 20 plus years. And one of the major findings in that literature is that diverse groups tend to be less cohesive than homogeneous ones. And so I actually started thinking about that and took like two or three

steps back to think about how do teams actually become cohesive? I mean, what is that? What is actual cohesion? And how do you build it? And so as I started having conversations about that with some colleagues of mine, we started looking at the literature and we actually realized that a lot of what cohesion is, is actually relationship. It's connection. It's trust. It's building a real relationship with the people that you work with. And that requires some self-disclosure. It means you have to share things about yourself. And I had some personal experiences of my own that actually drove me to think about that, to think about how uncomfortable sometimes I was with sharing personal things about myself with my colleagues that I worked with every day that I thought I trusted, that I thought I had great relationship with, yet I found myself censoring some of the information that I was willing to share with them.

And it gave me kind of the insight that I needed to understand a little bit more about how to build relationships across boundaries in the workplace, because I think it's going to be super critical for helping those diverse teams reach their potential. Yes. You have this story that I was hoping you could tell briefly about when one of your colleagues asked you what you did over the weekend. Could you just tell everybody? Yeah. Okay. So this is the story that actually started this research stream. So this colleague is a colleague of mine still to this day. We've been colleagues for many, many years now. And I was having a birthday, and I was all excited about

it. You know when your birthday falls on the weekend, how it's like really, really exciting, like it's Friday, and I got the whole weekend to celebrate my birthday. So everybody knew that it was my birthday. So when I showed back up at work on Monday, all happy and, you know, happy-go-lucky, my colleagues said, well, how was your birthday? You know, what did you do this weekend? How did it go? And I was like, oh, you know what did you do this weekend how did it go and I was like oh you know we went out to dinner I got together with some really good friends of mine that I hadn't seen in years we went out to dinner and we went to a concert and he was like oh a concert who did you go see I was like ah you don't you wouldn't know him and you know we just

we had dinner at this great restaurant and da da da and so I just kind of like swept under the rug who it was that I had gone to see. And it bothered me for a while. And I kept thinking to myself, why didn't I want to share with him that I had gone to see Kirk Franklin, who is a gospel, an African-American gospel artist, very popular. But somehow I just felt like he wouldn't know who this person was. And maybe it would highlight that I'm black. Maybe it would highlight that I'm Christian and so I just kind of felt like those were things that perhaps I shouldn't share with him but as I thought about it I thought to myself he would have never hesitated to share with me he's told me about all

these groups that he's seen that I've never heard of a day in my life and I say yeah okay cool good for you and I never judge him because of the music that he likes and listens to. So it was a moment of an aha moment for myself to think about, like, if I don't embrace who I am, if I don't love who I am, if I don't share who I am, how can I expect other people to do the same? So I want to ask the hosts, I know it was challenging and really different, this approach that we took of deciding to make a show where self-disclosure, we're talking about your personal lives, was a big part of it. And I want to hear how those first few weeks or months were getting used to that idea and how you felt about opening up to your colleagues,

to an audience? I'll start because I was pretty resistant to the idea of having to talk about myself on the show. I mean, for a couple of reasons. One, like it's not, it has never been part of my job as an editor to talk about myself very publicly. Two, the show is about the difficult experiences that women have at work. It's about all the frustrations that women feel, the unfairness that we have to grapple with. And those are not issues that one normally brings up with one's bosses. And Sarah and Maureen are literally my bosses. So, you know, I was a little worried about that and how much of that to express on the show. It took a little while to figure out

like how safe a space the studio really was. The other big thing I was, you know, concerned about with having to talk about myself on the show was I was worried about playing the role of the more junior host, the one with the fewest years of experience, the one asking a lot of questions about how do I advocate for myself, how do I get credit for my work, how do I talk to my boss.

I was a little worried that colleagues, authors that I work with, hearing that, I was nervous about that undermining my credibility, leading people to not, you know, take me seriously or question my judgment. So I was scared about all those things. And a lot of those concerns ended up being mostly unfounded, but it was still, you know, something that I had to deal with and talk to these guys about. I was excited. I was excited about it. And there are probably many reasons for that. But my experiences with self-disclosure at work have been enormously positive. Some of my best friends at work are women who took a risk by opening up to me, bursting into tears or something,

and then we suddenly connected. So I was kind of excited about the potential. And I think what caught me by surprise was that in some cases, questions would come up, topics would come up that were really hard to talk about. And I was kind of surprised that like, suddenly, I think of myself as a very open person. But suddenly, I was like, Oh, maybe, maybe I'm not going to share that. Amy, what about you? Yeah. So this was a tough one for me because I don't think of myself as being shy about my life or withholding anything. And I share openly at work that I'm in a committed relationship with another woman and have been for 23 years. And, you know, we've got the dogs and it's a great life and I'm very happy and maybe I have

too many pictures of my family on my desk but I found when I was sitting in front of the mic that I was not comfortable talking about that and that has sent me on a continuing

journey of soul searching. I have not pinpointed what's going on there. I would love to talk to you about it, Kathy, because I bet you have some insight. But, you know, when Amanda brought this up over lunch, it got pretty uncomfortable pretty fast. I remember, and I trust you so completely and was so grateful to you for doing that.

Well, it took me months to work up the courage to ask this question, Amy. Yeah, I know it did. So I think I admire your courage because I know that wasn't easy. So the long answer to your short question was this was a surprising challenge for me. Yes. Kathy, do you want to add anything about how being in the minority,

whether it's race or sexuality or politics, comes into play with authenticity and self-disclosure? Yeah. So when we started this research, one of the papers that we wrote is called Getting Closer at the Company Party. And part of the idea behind the paper was that companies have these events and activities and happy hours and socializing and Christmas parties, et cetera, that they ask all employees to come to with the expectation that it will somehow bring people closer together, that it will create some better relationships. And so we did this research and we asked people,

well, do you go to these events? Who's there with you? How similar are they to you? And then how close do you feel to them after the party's over. And you do see some positive uptick, especially when people share the same identity. So when people are in the minority or they're very different from the other people around them,

they don't get that same uptick of positive feelings of closeness with people after they've engaged in these things. And they often, they were basically telling us, well, you know, I go to these events because I kind of have to. And they're not really feeling like it's going to lead to something different for them. It turned out that when we did that research, that that was true for anybody who felt like they were surrounded by people who weren't like them, even if they were, you know, part of a, what we might consider a majority group in the United States. But then we also did some research with African Americans in particular to ask them, you know, kind of how comfortable would you feel sharing with or talking to people who look different from you in the workplace. And we got evidence, you know, time and time again,

that people were more comfortable with people who look like themselves, that they were concerned that perhaps sharing something about themselves that was different would actually create more distance between them and the other, as opposed to creating more closeness. And they were concerned that it might have a negative implications for their credibility and their status in the workplace. So it is a real kind of concern. And when I've written about this, I've actually, you know, kind of used stories from executives on Wall Street, who say, you know, look, my numbers were perfect. My numbers were better than anybody else's, but I still wasn't getting the promotion. And when I talked to my boss about what's going on, they said, we don't know you. and it was important for that particular person to make a decision about how much he wanted to

actually connect with the other people there in the workplace so it can have big implications and one of the things I tell people is that companies are like babies and if we think about our own babies we're really careful about who we leave our babies with we want to know who the person is. Yeah. You have another story when you had to take a risk on what you were going to tell your colleagues. Yeah. You want to pick it up from there? Yeah. This story is one that I think was another aha moment for me and definitely a risk that I had to decide if I wanted to take or not. So this was a situation. I'm from Chicago, born and raised, and I happened to be on the faculty at the time at Northwestern, which is up in Evanston. And my parents were still living on the south side of Chicago with my very large extended family. I'm the sixth child of six. And I was at work, and I got a call from one of my

nieces saying, you need to get down here to the south side right away because mom and dad have been arrested. And I was like, what? So I'm frazzled. I'm like, I got to go quickly. And of course, my colleagues are there. And there happens to be one of the colleagues, the same colleague that asked about the party, by the way. I had to leave very quickly.

And so of course, when I came back to work, they were like, what happened? Is everything okay? Is everybody okay? And I had to decide if I was going to share with my colleagues at work that my parents had been arrested because one of my nephews had, you know, who knows if he had done anything wrong, but the police chased them into the bathroom of my parents' house. And there you are. So, you know, it's like things unfolded from there. And I decided to share it, mostly because I thought the consequence of me either saying this is too difficult to share with you, or lying about it, or saying, oh,

it was nothing. There was no good alternative, in my opinion, that would actually be better than just telling the truth. And so I said, this was a very difficult situation, and I want to share with you guys what happened. And they super supportive they you know asked again and again how things were going you know it was a year and a half before it was all over with when it came down to going to court and all this stuff and the reality is that like I think it was really a bonding moment because it gave them an opportunity to see that although I had quote unquote made it, you know, here I am a professor, a PhD at Northwestern University, that as an African American woman, I was dealing with a life that they didn't see, you know, on the other side. And that, um, I think that actually gave them more respect for me.

Yeah. Because it seems like sometimes self-disclosure is something we can choose to do. We can choose to share information and that can be strategic in trying to build relationships at work, but sometimes it happens by surprise. There might be a family emergency or someone might ask you a question that you weren't expecting to get. And in fact, there was a moment that happened to Nicole in season one. And what was going on in the conversation, we were talking about authenticity. We were talking about how oftentimes women are expected to be nice at work. Nicole was talking about how she sends very polite emails, tries to always be positive, to kind of win buy-in.

And our guest expert, Tina Opie, interjected with a question about Nicole's personal life. And let's listen to that moment. I think that's, you know, internalized from growing up and not really getting to be angry or getting to show, show anger or even be direct,

ask for things directly. So I'm putting you on the spot, Nicole. Do you identify as Asian from what country? Philippines. Okay. Oh, you speak Tagalog?

I do. Okay, I was in Subic Bay. So my mother makes lumpia and all that. She knows how to cook Filipino food. She's an amazing cook. So that was that moment. So, Nicole, what was going through your head in that moment? Okay, so I have been thinking about this a lot.

I mean, you can hear in the audio, like, I was put on the spot. I sound a little uncomfortable, kind of awkward. And I've been reflecting on why, like, why that was. I wasn't revealing anything particularly, like, new or surprising about myself. But, you know, unlike my, you know, age or years of experience, I don't try to downplay or hide, like I can, my ethnicity, but it is not something that I, you know, announce when I walk into a room or when I get on the phone. I'm not like starting a meeting by, hey, I'm an Asian American woman and I have something to say. That's, you know, it's not something that I usually walk in and like go come forth with. I've found that it's a little, for me, difficult to talk about my race and ethnicity in a pretty non-diverse environment. You know, it's just an easy way to feel like one aspect of my identity is being called out

for being different from everyone else and you know not that I have anything against difference so that I don't celebrate difference but it can feel it's easy to feel singled out you know put on the spot forced to talk about something about yourself that is different and it can be easy to feel tokenized, too. So it sounds uncomfortable, and I think that's because I was, and I've been, you know, thinking a little bit more about why. So Kathy, I would love to know, am I just awkward and awful, or is that a fairly common experience? I think it's a very common experience. I mean, the reality is that we're all on our own journeys of identity and how comfortable we are disclosing various things about ourselves. When we talked about this, I kind of said, you know, for me, my race, my identity is something that I've ever thought about, can I possibly hide this? But I certainly have been in contexts where I might want to be careful about how much I highlight it or how much I let it take center stage, I guess you could say. We all have a need for belonging. And we oftentimes have concerns that if we highlight things that are different about us,

that somehow that might make us feel like we don't belong where we are. So it's absolutely normal. Thank you. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Mudupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts.

One of my roles as the producer is to draw out stories from my hosts. And it's gotten a lot easier as I've gotten to know them. We have a ton of trust, I think, with each other and have talked about boundaries over and over. And we reset boundaries sometimes. Um, but Kathy, I'm wondering, what advice do you have for producers or people in the position of supporting others to talk about their personal lives in a professional context? Yeah. So I get this question often about like, you know, what's okay to talk about in the workplace, what's not okay to talk about in the workplace. And I, I've been on my own personal journey with this as well. And so I try to tell people, like, first of all,

you kind of have to meet people where they are. Like, just because you're really comfortable sharing some things about yourself doesn't necessarily mean that everybody is. And that's okay. I actually suggest to people that if they want to set some kind of norms about this in their workplace, that the best thing to do is to model it for other people, to actually share things about yourself. So one of the things that I do whenever I'm teaching, for instance, is I take about 15, sometimes 20 minutes at the beginning of my time with a group to let them get to know who I am. You know, I basically say, like, look, we're all filters.

We all have our own experiences and our own outlooks and our own perspectives through which we interpret life. And I'm just a filter. And I'm going to share things with you that are biased because I'm a filter and I'm biased in my own ways. And I think it's important for you to know who I am so you know who you're learning from so that you can take into consideration what I'm biased in my own ways. And I think it's important for you to know who I am so you know who you're learning from so that you can take into consideration what I'm sharing with you with the bias that comes with it. And so I actually try to model it for other people. I share, you know, with folks when I feel comfortable. And there have been times in my career where I've said, you know, I want to share this with you, but I don't really want it to be common knowledge for everybody. I feel like I trust the two of you to tell this,

but don't tell everybody that my parents got arrested. And so the reality though that I've learned over time is that you really do have to be comfortable yourself with whatever it is that you're disclosing. Because the fact of the matter is that once you share something with someone, it really belongs to them at that point. You know, like it's information, you can certainly ask them, you know, not to share it. But the reality is you don't control anybody. And sometimes people have to deal with the information they have in the ways that they need to deal with that information. And so it's a, it's kind of a tricky thing, you kind of have to really know yourself, and be comfortable with whatever it is you're sharing, and understand that not everybody will be at the same place you are.

If we're talking more strategic, self disclosure, or oversharing, where is the line? Has research found that there is a line where something is just too much at work or there's backlash, whatever it is? Do you have any insight to that? Yeah. I mean, I think this is very idiosyncratic and it could be different in different places. But of course, people say, don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion, that those two things are kind of like off the table. Is that true? I personally have not experienced that to necessarily be true. I mean, it turns out that

the person who is the dean of the Columbia Business School, my boss, very clearly he's a Republican. And that's not something that he hides. He worked in the Bush administration. And he actually feels very comfortable talking about politics. I feel less comfortable talking about politics. So I would allow him to talk about politics as much as he wanted. And I would just kind of like nod my head and say, okay, let's what else we're talking about, you know, like, and so I think some of it is really trying to, trying to, to know that in the environment that you're in, there could be different norms around what's acceptable and

what's not. Let's talk a little bit more about oversharing. So you could overshare in a meeting or out with colleagues and immediately realize you have crossed the line. Or you could realize three weeks later that you shouldn't have said that. How do you reset boundaries in either situation? situation yeah so um oftentimes i will say like in the moment if i shared something that maybe i shouldn't have i'll say oh i might have made you feel uncomfortable by sharing that like i apologize if i made you feel uncomfortable sharing that but um you know like that's really all you can do is kind of apologize for it and the reality is again like now that the information is out there you can't really take it back you know it's don't know if you can put the genie back in the bottle. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, something that has helped me, and I think doing this show has helped me with, is just, I sort of realized I had to decide ahead of time what parts of me or my story

or, you know, people at work's story that they had shared with me that I was going to keep private. Because stuff would come up, and I'd be sort of halfway through a sentence. And then I'd be like, Oh, maybe either like another person wouldn't want me blabbing on about this, or maybe this isn't something I should talk about. Um, but since I'm a kind of person who feels like if I have to keep something, if I'm not sharing, then I feel like I'm lying lying like if I don't blab to you all my secrets then I'm like oh I'm hiding but that is in fact not true it is healthy to have boundaries and like adults to have boundaries so thinking in advance about like where some of those guardrails were

helped me with the show and I actually think has been helpful at work too that's great yeah and I would say like if it's something that happened and you think about it three weeks later I have found myself kind of doing the following like sending a note saying you know we had a great meeting I really enjoyed talking to you I think I might have shared something that really wasn't mine to share and it would be really helpful to me if you didn't share that information further with other people. I made a mistake and I would really appreciate if you helped me out. That sounds good.

Do you think there's an upside to that vulnerability? Absolutely. Is there more trust built after you try to repair that oversharing with somebody at work? I don't know. It's hard to know exactly the implications that it will have because the person might think, oh, I'm not telling her anything because she can't keep her mouth shut. Right? But so I think that it is

the humility that you're expressing in that moment, I think, can be something that people, again, find very respectful and that they appreciate about you. They feel like you're thoughtful enough to recognize that this is something you shared three weeks ago, right? They probably forgot what it was. They didn't even be thinking about it anymore. Yet it's something that you felt compelled to kind of go back to them about. And so I think, you know, I think it can be helpful. We are wrapping up season two. And I am wondering,

having done several episodes now of Women at Work, how you three think about self-disclosure differently and if you've gotten more comfortable or learned to set boundaries differently, whatever it is. I don't think I've gotten more comfortable.

I mean, it's still like talking about yourself, self-disclosing is a tricky thing to do, especially in a professional setting. It's all about a balancing act and setting boundaries. And what I've found is it also depends on how much trust you've established with someone and what kind of rapport you have but overall having done two seasons of the show like I've learned how powerful self-disclosure can be and not just for helping you build relationships like the kinds

that we've built over the last year but also you also it's been helpful in helping me find my voice, talking about myself and some of the frustrations and concerns I feel, seeing people respond to that empathetically and positively has been really validating for my own worries and insecurities and feelings. And that's powerful. And it's also helped me,

you know, find my voice, know what to advocate for, have a better sense of what I want and, you know, what battles I can fight, where I need help. It's been a really overall positive experience, all of the self-disclosure. Oh, me. I'm punting to you so I have more time to think. I like just the marching down the road thing. Amy, what about you? Well, so I come at it from a different perspective. After our conversation, the conversation. It was a great lunch.

It was a great lunch, and it really woke me up. It just knocked me upside the head. And it was months ago, and I'm still thinking about it. But a couple of the epiphanies that I've had since that conversation, and mostly because of the work that the four of us do together, is I've realized something. We all know this, but when you really realize something, it's different, which is that what you don't say is a powerful form of communication. And I don't want anyone to fill in.

I'm not Mad Libs. I don't want people to ascribe shame or embarrassment to a part of me that I feel absolutely the opposite about. So that was a really important thing that you did for me. The other thing is, in the course of that conversation, you brought up that a younger colleague of ours who is a lesbian had asked why I never talk about my partner Nanette on the show because I talk about her all the time at work and that's the part that really broke my heart

because it I would never want her I feel very protective of her to feel that it's not okay for her to live her full life in our office. And it made me understand that I'm a role model,

which I'd never understood before. So I owe you a huge gratitude, Amanda. Thank you for bringing that up. You're welcome. Thank you for having that conversation with me. Well, I didn't have much choice. I guess I just put you on the spot and asked. Sarah, what about you?

Well, I think that's really instructive. And I think what we heard earlier with Tina Opie asking Nicole was instructive. Because as someone who is like a sort of an overshare on most things um it's sort of weird but I feel really like strongly that I shouldn't pry it's like I had noticed that you had not mentioned like your background or identity like ethnic identity and but I didn't want to ask I didn't be like Nicole like the listeners can't hear that you're Asian American why don't you say like you know I I didn't want to ask I didn't want to ask. I didn't be like, Nicole, like the listeners can't hear that you're Asian American. Why don't you say like, you know, I didn't want to ask. I didn't want to pry. And then I know I had noticed that you didn't talk about Nan and I was like, well, that's her

business. It's like, I'm not going to pry, but it actually like, so I guess one of the things that I've been sort of wrestling with is like, was really helpful that Tina asked that it was really helpful that Amanda asked you Amy about that. So I was sort of like, Hmm, like that's asked that. It was really helpful that Amanda asked you, Amy, about that. So I was sort of like, hmm, that's kind of my thing to mull over. As someone who blabs a lot, why was I so hesitant to ask?

Just making it all about me. No. Yeah, no. Do we want to add anything about the impact we think that self-disclosure telling our own stories has had on the show and our audience? Yeah, I think that one of the things that has worked really well is that our audience is so generous with their own stories. They will open up and share their stories freely with us,

and they go deep. And, I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road for what we do. We can talk until the cows come home about theory, but it doesn't matter a damn if it doesn't make a difference in our listeners' lives. So to hear about the kinds of struggles they're having, to be able to relate to those personally but also theoretically, and to bring those into our own thinking and our programming,

I think has been huge. And it's because we tell stories that I think they feel they can tell stories. We kind of model it, although they do it better. And it's because we tell stories that I think they feel they can tell stories, right? We kind of model it, although they do it better. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the

future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to ai and machine learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work that's netsuite.com slash women at work we have about 15 minutes for questions how many people just to get a sense of this might want to ask a question? Okay, we have quite a few. Okay, so there are two microphones on either side. Hi. You've given me so much to think about self-disclosure, but do you all have examples or one of you, several of you, have examples of maybe where you've self-disclosed and it has gone really, really badly. Not the oversharing, but maybe that disclosure.

Again, you lose control of the information. And I just feel like I've experienced that, so I'm just wondering what you all have experienced with that. That's a great question. For me personally, not in the workplace but it's partly because of the amazingly supportive nature of our workplace and we have a lot of people who've worked together for a long time like i've definitely said things on the show that i probably shouldn't have said but then amanda just cuts them out so like what i really want is like amanda to follow me along like in real life in real time and

somehow do that well that is the thing about this form of self-disclosure that we're doing we make a product and it is a process we sit together and we try out ideas but then there's what we record there is what I listen to and edit down we all listen to it again people have veto power so there is it's not just the raw tape of whatever we say and I think that

makes everybody feel safer and hopefully a little braver to experiment and try out ideas and stretch ourselves yes my name is Joyce braver to experiment and try out ideas and stretch ourselves. Yes? Yes, hi.

My name is Joyce. This is a topic that my friends and I talk about a lot, not only friends but colleagues. And I have found and they have found that there's a gender component to it. I think women tend to share a lot more than men do. And I was wondering, is this something you have found? So the way that I studied this and tried to understand it was really not so much through a gender lens. So I had both men and women participating in the studies, and things were pretty consistent with the two of them.

But I do think that the need for connection and being relationship oriented, I mean, there is some evidence that women, you know, that there are some gender differences with respect to that. But I think the workplace is kind of a unique place and the issues of like what's normative and what's okay and what's not okay, kind of applies, you know, both to men and to women. So you're both kind of navigating how to do this. And I think you'd be surprised at how much men actually do share in the workplace about all kinds of things

that are happening in their lives. I mean, some of my colleagues can't stop talking and showing me baby pictures and et cetera all the time. So I feel woefully unprepared to talk about the gender issue on this generational difference that you that you perceive I think that in my conversations with you all I've seen some generational issues but it's not as consistent as you might expect it to be because when I look at you and Nicole clearly you're from different generations and

I think you both had your own struggles with trying to think about how to share and self-disclose. So I see it more as like an individual thing. What we know is that there's a boundary management theory that actually talks about how people manage the boundary between their personal life and their professional life and that they're just individual differences in what people prefer. Some people prefer to segment their personal and their professional life, and some people prefer to integrate their personal and professional life. And sometimes you might not have as much control over it as you'd like. I am very much an integrator. One of my students that I started this research with was totally a segmenter. We both were African-American women, but there were lots of things about her, even after I worked with her for five years, that I still didn't know because she just preferred

segmentation. And so some of it is just an individual difference that, you know, different people may have experienced in their lives. It could be from things that they learned, experiences that they had that make them more vulnerable and they decide they don't want to share. But I met my husband in graduate school. We're on the faculty together at the same university. We have children together, et cetera. And it's almost impossible for the entire academy knows that I'm married to Damon Phillips. It's not possible to hide it. So for me, segmenting is just a harder thing. It's harder to segment than it is to just integrate. Yes. Hi. So this is a little bit on the flip side of what you were just saying.

I just changed jobs recently. And prior to that, I was at a very liberal nonprofit that championed bringing your whole self to work but I as someone who's pretty strategic and thoughtful about what I share was supervising someone who I thought was oversharing so what advice would you all give to supervising someone who you think might be detrimentally oversharing thank you great question I think this is like perfect Amy question. Oh, God. I don't know. Anytime there's like a management, what should a manager do? I'm like, Amy. And I was just sitting back waiting for someone to be smart. Well, what would I do? I think there's only so much taking care of that you can do.

And then I also think that there are pretty fundamental differences. This is what I think you've been saying, Kathy, person to person about where the boundaries are. And I find it very difficult myself to set someone else's boundaries for them. And I wouldn't try, and I would be sensitive to someone's trying to do it to me. So I don't have an answer for you other than I don't think about it the same way you do. But your story did make me think actually of a time when I did overshare and it was bad for my career and a boss did say something to me that was helpful. So in that case, I had posted on Facebook where I am friends with lots of colleagues and lots of people outside the organization that I was like just super overwhelmed by the amount of email I was getting. And I had like, it was, I mean, it was like a minor issue, but I, it was like Friday night and

I had cleared my inbox and then I got like 30 emails of people replying to me at six o'clock on a Friday. And I was just like, I just, what is this? I just can't take this. It's unending. And I sort of posted a version of that on Facebook on a Monday. My boss said, you know, I know you get overwhelmed by this stuff sometimes, but that does not benefit you to share that. Just close your computer and walk away. If people reading that thing that you can't handle your email, they're not going to give you cool assignments. And I was kind of like, oh, okay. And that was hard for me to like, I had to go through some like journey of like, how much of my stress do I show? How much do I conceal? And is there a way I could simply not feel it? Because that would be nice. But that was a case where both I had sort of way overshared

in a detrimental way. And also someone gave me some advice that was like, where both I had sort of way overshared in a detrimental way. And also someone gave me some advice that was like, it's in your interests to actually conceal some of this stuff. Yeah. Thank you. Next question. First of all, thank you for the panel. It's been really, it's just eye opening. But as a woman who's about to enter the workforce, how do you manage not coming off as cold but then not oversharing because i'm

someone who tends to overshare so how do you strike that balance and still be able to form relationships without going too far yeah i think you tread lightly i mean i i tell people all the time um this this one thing like first of all my research does not suggest you share everything with everybody. Let me be really clear about that. That is not what it's suggesting. It is suggesting that sometimes we have these thoughts in our head that somehow sharing this information with somebody is going to be so detrimental and hurtful, when in fact it actually is not. It actually is an opportunity to make a connection with somebody who might then invest in you more deeply,

who might be more willing to mentor you and to sponsor you, who feels like they know you and they want to see you succeed. And so it actually can be some positive things that come out of sharing some things with people. So I would just say to you that pay attention to the environment that you're in. Try to understand the context. What are people sharing with you? You know, what's normative in this environment? So you want to try to understand that a little bit. And then you want to identify not everybody,

you know, a few people, one person even in that workplace that you feel like you might be able to build a deeper relationship with. That's what mentorship and sponsorship, et cetera, is all about. People can't help you if they don't know who you are. And so, again, I think it's really important to be somewhat strategic about these things. But I tell people all the time, for instance, if there's not one person in this workplace who's different from you, who may, in fact, have some power, who may, in fact, be part of the majority group. If there's not one person in the entire organization that you don't feel like you can share a little bit more about yourself with, then that's probably not the right organization for you

because the reality is that your ability to thrive and to grow and to develop and to learn is partially dependent on somebody investing in you. And you've got to find those people. So you have to kind of try it out a little bit and take a little bit of risk and put yourself out there with somebody. Not everybody, but to try to make connections with some people. But pay attention to the environment that you're in and what's normative in that environment. Thank you for your question. Yes. Hi.

So you all have touched on this in some ways but i just wanted to ask it in a really specific way because i think some of the hesitation around disclosing mental health issues at work or even health issues or even i was talking with a colleague today pregnancy is because we're worried as women about the ramifications that that will have on our ability to get assignments our ability to get promoted i was just talking the other day at work about some mental health issues and my immediate inclination as an oversharer was like, oh yeah, this doesn't matter. And then I stepped back and thought, okay, but in some workplaces, this will really matter. And I wonder what you all hear from women about that and, and what you hear from

managers about that, about how they, how they receive that information and then what they do with it after. Yeah. It's, it's definitely true that people have biases that we're always trying to manage. Um, and that we have to be careful about managing them how we manage them. I have my own personal experiences around this that I'm still kind of managing through. And for me, you know, it was again, it was important, like you're going through something pretty major in your life. And you you want to have somebody there in the workplace who kind of has your back. So for me, I thought about not sharing this really important piece of information about myself for a while. And then I realized I just could not kind of really thrive in my workplace and go to work every day and engage with people without feeling like I was somehow lying or holding a secret that was, you know, a pretty big secret. And it turns out one of my colleagues does research on keeping secrets and it's burdensome. It actually is burdensome. It's physically burdensome,

it's mentally burdensome, it's cognitively burdensome. And so for me, I kind of had to share this information. I also find that you'll be surprised again, many times when you have a relationship with somebody in the workplace that you can kind of take that risk with, you'll be surprised at how people have similarities with you on some of these dimensions that they might not have been willing to admit or share with someone else. And it can actually, again, bring you much closer with that person. So some of it is knowing yourself and knowing that like holding secrets, it's really hard. And it's it's quite burdensome and can take away from your success. Something that certainly I have noticed

is when people don't know what's going on, they tend to fill in the blanks. So Amy, you referred to this earlier as Mad Libs. And so what I have tried to do is, you know, New England winters are long and they often affect me in a negative way. And so I have tried to notice like if it's January and I'm annoyed at everyone, I'm kind of like, this is probably not everyone being annoying. This is probably, it's just January in New England and I'm feeling a little like winter blues. And what I've tried to do is just be proactive about that with like the most important people. So if I'm having an episode like winter blues. And what I've tried to do is just be proactive about that with like the most important people.

So if I'm having an episode like that, I try to talk to my boss maybe and say, you know, I've been irritable lately. It's just the winter, you know, or just some way of disclosing enough that they don't think it's about them or that there's some other bigger issue. But it's hard.

I mean, the thing is, you know, with pregnancy, it comes to a point where you can't hide it anymore. that there's some other bigger issue. But it's hard. I mean, the thing is, you know, with pregnancy, it comes to a point where you can't hide it anymore. So that situation tends to take care of itself. But the question of when you bring that up is, I think really depends on your boss and your company. Because in a lot of companies, you are penalized for that. Thank you.

Go ahead. I wanted to talk a little bit more about i guess emotion um i'm someone who usually tends to not share if i am upset at something in the moment or if i'm angry or if i'm sad i tend to just kind of show the same emotion across the board and i'm noticing now more that people feel more comfortable expressing those emotions i don don't think that's wrong, but I'm just struggling with now kind of being, I guess, part of that workforce, right, that now tends to express themselves a little bit more and say what they feel, when they feel, and how they feel it. So just if you guys had any thoughts on that. Part of my goal with any interaction that I'm having with someone and how much I'm self disclosing, etc, is to control my own story. Because I don't want people making up things

about how I feel or what I think or where I've been or what I've done or whatever, right? I don't want people making up and filling in the blanks because, as you mentioned, they will fill in the blanks. And so some of it is self-awareness, kind of knowing yourself. If you know that you're a person that if you start expressing your emotions, you're going to fly off the handle, then, yeah, you probably should be careful about doing that because you also are trying to maintain professionalism as well.

But I think for me, it really is about, I want people to see me the way I see myself. And the only way that people can see me the way I see myself is if I actually express to them how I see myself and the experiences that I'm having in the way that I feel. And so for me, actually, it's kind of selfish. It's about control and power, quite frankly. And sometimes I may be wrong.

Sometimes I may have to make adjustments to that. But I have found, actually, over my career, that it has really been a helpful thing for me to be willing to share my own story. And you can bring your best version of yourself to work without bringing necessarily everything. That's right.

It's about controlling that story. I think that's a really good way to put it. Thank you everybody for coming. Thank you to the panel and everyone who helped organize this. Thank you. Thank you, Amanda. Let's go hit the bar. Let's go hit the bar.

Let's get a drink.