Are you ready for people to bring their whole self to work?

?In the workplace today, the lines between our professional and personal lives are increasingly blurred, and it can be hard to tell where your “work self” ends and your “real self” begins. In fact, many workplaces encourage you to bring your “whole self” to the workplace, and some argue that it can encourage creativity and genuine connection. A recent self-help book, Bring Your Whole Self to Work by Mike Robbins, even posits that “we can work better, lead better, and be more engaged” if we do so.

?With work often leaking into our free time, we might not actually want to bring our “whole selves” to work, instead wanting to keep back our real selves for our family and friends. Plus, for neurodivergent people in the workplace, the idea of being 100% themselves at work can be more confusing and complicated. When workplaces say “be yourself at work”, there’s often an asterix, an addendum that says “but not like that”. When I work with autistic people, they’re often told they can be themselves at work, but when they unmask, they can be punished or ostracised for their “real self” not aligning with everyone else’s.?Read more about autism and masking here in this blog by Niraj Shah AIA .

Without giving clear rules, boundaries and expectations around professionalism (and what that means?), you can make things complicated or difficult for people who struggle to gauge exactly what “being themselves” means by your professional standards. When neurodivergent people unmask, they can often be punished and bullied, with more unusual interests often rejected by other colleagues.

?I have the ability (mostly!) to decide how much of myself I want to share with workplaces, clients and colleagues but not everyone has that privilege. I’m in a privileged position in many ways, for example my interests could be considered acceptable to talk about in the workplace, i.e. Football, music or neurodiversity! It would just be the depth of my interest in those areas that could highlight a difference about my brain to the majority! I remember being at school and a friend who supported the same team as me (Wimbledon FC) said to me one day "just stop talking about Wimbledon FC ALL THE TIME"! I've learnt where to apply that depth of knowledge and when to hold it back.

However if the topic is not so populist then colleagues can become confused or even cruel if someone talks at length about a more niche special interest.

?Of course, it isn’t that people are deliberately ostracising neurodivergent people when they show their true selves. It can just be an almost evolutionary case of pushing people away who don’t fit exactly into the group. Job listings often talk about an office’s “culture”–when someone’s “true self” doesn’t align with that mentality, how are we punishing them? While workplaces are embracing diversity more, the question is: are you ready for people to be unmasked? Do you know what that means? Are you prepared to give people clear expectations around behavior?

?We can spend more time in the workplace than we do with our family, so it’s understandable if people struggle to be “on” at all times. For neurodivergent people, masking can be exhausting, and allowing people space to be their true selves can give them some breathing room, as long as you truly mean it. If someone’s true self needs to sit in a corner for an hour every so often, is that allowed? If their true self is a little less social than their professional self? Workplaces will take on a particular kind of neurodivergent person who doesn’t cause or come with too many problems and is masking well enough, but if they’re going to encourage people to bring their whole self to work, they need to be ready for what that might mean.

At Adjust through our training, we can help you learn how to communicate what you mean, when you say you want to embrace your employees authentic selves.