I was at a conference this week that had business woman Karren Brady as one of its key note speakers. "One of the challenges of being a business woman" she explained, "is keeping the right balance between your personal and professional lifes. The best way I have found of succeeding at it is by having two different personalities: a work personality and a private personality, and keeping the two very separate". An amused attendee later subscribed over coffee: "my husband wouldn't recognise me at work".
We undoubtedly learn behaviours at work, different from our natural ones, that make us successful. Introverts for example sometimes develop into what Psychology Today cutely labels "bubbly introverts": still having a preference for alone time, but displaying extroverted behaviours (speaking up and interacting effectively with other people) to progress at work (see others).
Over time, we combine innate and learned behaviours to form a professional persona, one that plays by the work rules and builds on traits we become capable of mastering even when unnatural to us. Work's active recoginition mechanisms profitably accelerate their development.
After listening to Karren Brady I did ask myself what happens when one persona becomes significantly more appealing to us than the other? What if we end up liking our handcrafted professional selves more than our private ones? After all, work has stages, audiences, awards, hierarchy, power, spotlights.
Today is Saturday and watching people at breakfast this morning tapping away at their Blackberrys I couldn't help but think of them as actors melancholicly staring at their characters' costumes in the intimacy. Were they getting an unnoticeable ego shot out of it? Arguably more poetry than science but I've put mine off until Monday, just in case.
We undoubtedly learn behaviours at work, different from our natural ones, that make us successful. Introverts for example sometimes develop into what Psychology Today cutely labels "bubbly introverts": still having a preference for alone time, but displaying extroverted behaviours (speaking up and interacting effectively with other people) to progress at work (see others).
Over time, we combine innate and learned behaviours to form a professional persona, one that plays by the work rules and builds on traits we become capable of mastering even when unnatural to us. Work's active recoginition mechanisms profitably accelerate their development.
After listening to Karren Brady I did ask myself what happens when one persona becomes significantly more appealing to us than the other? What if we end up liking our handcrafted professional selves more than our private ones? After all, work has stages, audiences, awards, hierarchy, power, spotlights.
Today is Saturday and watching people at breakfast this morning tapping away at their Blackberrys I couldn't help but think of them as actors melancholicly staring at their characters' costumes in the intimacy. Were they getting an unnoticeable ego shot out of it? Arguably more poetry than science but I've put mine off until Monday, just in case.
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