Straight out of college, I became an elementary school teacher, which is a little bit more casual in a sense, right? You’re dressing more casually, you have a little bit more casual conversations as you’re primarily interacting with kids, your students. And so when I left that into my first office, a real corporate job, I felt like, I’ve arrived! I’m now this super professional person, and I’m going in wearing a suit every day to the office with adults.
And I was so excited the first time that my manager, Linda, called me into the conference room for a one-on-one meeting. I mean, it’s the conference room – it’s the big table with the big chairs, and I’m sitting there in that suit. And the first few minutes of this meeting go pretty much how I expected it to, until all of a sudden it took this complete left turn. Linda just unloads every single thought, feeling, and emotion about individuals in our office, the company, and her job overall.
And it didn’t stop there. She was literally crying, streams of tears coming down her face. I’m 28 years old in my first corporate environment, and I’m almost paralyzed by this.
So much so that the next couple of years at that company, and then even the first few years at my next organization, I swung to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I almost wore this suit as a shield of armor. I didn’t want to reveal any sort of my vulnerabilities or my emotions. Finally, I discovered that not either one of these ends of the spectrum were really the most successful way to go.
Being completely closed off limited the types of connections and trust that I could build with my direct reports and my peers. And it definitely limited how far I could advance into a leadership role. Like pretty much everything in leadership, we really don’t want to be on either end of the spectrum. So, as we look at this transparency spectrum, as I like to refer to it as, how transparent should we be? Where on the spectrum do we fall?
Now for some of you, you hear the word vulnerability and you cringe. You’re like, you should not reveal any feelings, any emotions. But we know as human beings that that is absolutely not the case. Revealing some side of our experiences, our thoughts, that inner monologue, what we’re thinking about, what we’re experiencing, revealing some of that is extremely powerful. As I said, to build the connections, to establish trust, to show credibility as you continue down your professional journey.
So where on this transparency spectrum should you lie? Again, just like most things in leadership, you should find yourself somewhere in the middle. But how do you know what that looks like? How do you get there? How much is too much to share? How much is not enough to share? There’s one question that I really would encourage you to ask yourself. The next time you find yourself saying, you know what? I’m about to reveal this, I’m about to share this, I’m about to express this, there’s a question you can ask yourself. And that is, what I’m about to share, how will it help the person or the people moving forward?
What I’m about to share with them, is it going to be helpful for them? And if you find yourself saying, yes, it’s going to help them in order to build that connection with me, it’s going to help them see something different and have some more trust so that we can now move forward to the next thing. Or perhaps it reveals a lesson, it reveals something that they can take into their own professional experience and avoid or lean into.
But if you find yourself saying, I’m not really sure, I don’t know what they’re going to take away, then I would put the red flags up, caution you to say that’s probably not something that you want to share. When you get into the mode of revealing different thoughts, emotions, feelings, that vulnerability and being overly transparent with no intent, no growth for the other person, then it’s more like you’re just having a personal therapy session.
You’re just sitting there, and that’s what happened for me in that situation with my manager, Linda was just unloading. I don’t know whether she asked herself that question, I don’t know if maybe she genuinely thought I would learn something from that, but majority of what she was sharing was just for her own release. And when we start to share emotions and express feelings that are just for our own release, then that is not appropriate within our professional setting.
That is where we want to leave that for our confidants, our friends, our family, those people that we trust outside of the workplace. So I encourage you, evaluate where you are on this transparency spectrum and how can you get yourself a little bit closer in the middle, so that you’re benefiting your growth and the growth of those people around you? Simply by asking that question – what I’m about to share, could it benefit them? And if it is, absolutely share that with them!