Ooops, be careful, your personal life is showing

November 5, 1:36 PMJobs ExaminerEileen P. Gunn

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    Where do we draw the line between our personal and professional selves and how much do we let the two come together?  It’s a tough question. These days, when there are so many more points of overlap between our business and personal lives, you can’t help but wonder how much we can reveal our civilian emotions and personalities at work.

These questions started bouncing around in my mind this week as I was blog surfing to see what other career and workplace experts were writing about. Of the blogs I read regularly and one of the most compelling—in a train wreck sort of way—is Penelope Trunk’s, the Brazen Careerist.

I know Trunk’s writing from when she was a savvy and well-connected columnist at Business 2.0 magazine who seemed to know Silicon Valley inside and out.  Back then the title of her column seemed to suit her, and not in a bad way.Nowadays she seems less brazen and more, well, scattered.

I read Trunk because a part of me admires her moxy and business savvy.  She’s basically a writer, like me. But she has built her Brazen Careerist brand into some sort of business worthy of venture capital. She publishes books and travels the country for speaking gigs and corporate presentations.

But I also read it because her writing is very emotional and she’s pretty upfront about the way her job and her personal life repeatedly collide in bad, morale-crushing, emotionally exhausting ways.  She seems a little loopy and I have to wonder from week to week if she’s going to keep it together. I also wonder who would invite her to speak or give her venture money after reading her blog.

After all, corporate coaches and motivational speakers are supposed to be more together, insightful and UP! UP! UP! than the rest of us—that’s why we listen to them. They aren’t supposed to break up with their boyfriends and cry in the backseats of taxis on their way to make Powerpoint presentations.

But her open-book life begs the question for me:  In the age of Oprah, Rachel Ray and Deepak Chopra, how much can we let it all hang out?  Some people say that good leaders have the strength to be emotionally honest.

Indeed Hillary Clintons won new supporters when she got teary eyed in New Hampshire during the primaries, and no one held it against president-elect Barack Obama when he became publicly weepy talking about his recently deceased Grandma on the campaign trail.

But what if GE CEO Jeff Immelt broke down during a board meeting, whether it be over some source of personal grief or his frustration with the government’s inconsistent and too-slow approach to climate-related regulation?  Board members would probably send Immelt on long vacation and start a search for a new CEO.

What if Meg Whitman or Avon CEO Andrea Jung made the ups and downs of their love lives highly public online?  I think their PR advisors would tell them to get a grip and get back to business.

I can tell you the one and only time I cried in front of a boss—overwhelmed by his gruff personality and the side effects of an inoculation I’d gotten the day before—I didn’t impress him with my strength and leadership. He sent me back to my office to calm down and do the rewrite he needed.  And that's what I did.

But what about when we aren’t falling apart?  How much is it OK to talk about spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends and kids at work?  Should we really chat about our kitchen renovation, upcoming dental surgery or the weekend goings on at our church, mosque or Wiccan circle?

I have a friend who is Indian and loves expressing the ethnic side of herself by wearing long colorful scarves and flowing clothes to the office. But she also keeps a few conservative suits in her closet for client meetings and job interviews. Clearly, she's found her line.

I often wonder how much I should let on to editors about my sleepless nights and lunchtime nursing.  How do I give them an honest picture of my availability and limitations without scaring them away from hiring a potentially exhausted and distracted reporter?

In some ways it was easier in the days of the grey flannel suit.  You donned your impersonal work uniform, left the wife and kids at the doorstep and became a good corporate soldier for eight hours a day. 

But today the wife is answering work emails from the sidelines of a soccer game and her husband is organizing a team fundraiser from the office while working late. We drop into employer sponsored yoga classes at lunchtime and train with coworkers for the company triathlon team.  We work in pajamas during the week and spend the weekend doing volunteer work with our department. We go on team retreats where we climb mountains and kayak and party together before "bonding" over shared values and a common (corporate) mission.

So there are few hard and fast rules for what is OK and what isn’t.  We really just have to exercise judgment and discretion on a constant basis. We have to make a habit of asking ourselves, is this right in this particular circumstance?  What does it say about me as a professional and is that the message I want to send?

Oh yeah, and it's best to avoid crying in the boss’ office–or before Powerpoint presentations.

For more information: Read Penelope Trunk's blog,