Charade. A pretense or false show — something that’s meant to look real or sincere but is actually fake or deceptive. Like a theater.
Sometimes, I have felt like work – the professional domain – is like a real-life role-playing game. Stepping into an office has occasionally felt like stepping into an improv theater where rules apply that don’t otherwise:
Feelings should be left outside the office, despite all of us are human beings with feelings. There is strong evidence that gut feel and feelings play a major role in making the right decisions, including business decisions. Yes, there are work places that do not tap into that.
People need to dress differently, even if they are not comfortable wearing those kinds of clothes. I am personally not too comfortable wearing button-up shirts or, worse, suits.
Similarly, we need to look or behave in a certain way. There are workplaces where people will give you a look if you dye your hair in a certain way, do not cover your tattoos, wear big glasses, or behave heteronormatively.
There are hierarchies. At the top, you have a CEO, in the middle there are managers, and at the bottom, there are “individual contributors”. At times, this can feel like hierarchies diminishes the value of certain people based on their role or level. At worst, this can create situations similar to The Stanford Prison Experiment, where people forget they are working with humans similarly to themselves. Or, people take advantage of other people to move up the ladder.
Some managers think they need to be bossy because that’s how they think bosses behave. But if you meet them outside of work, they are friendly people.
Language is different. People want to sound smart & professions: SLOs, KPIs, KYC, … Not to mention all the war jargon: “Conquer the market”, “set the pole down in Spain”, “A minefield”, “Casualties”, … Of course, there are words needed to communicate business & tech, but sometimes I find that vocabulary overly complex.
The above list can probably be made longer, but needless to say, there are people who are not themselves at work.
Acting, Personas, the Shadow, Diversity Link to heading
“They’re putting on an act — pretending, but not being genuine.”
There are many psychology models involving us hiding behind different masks. For example, sociologist Erving Goffman described social interaction as a kind of performance – people are like actors on a stage, playing roles depending on the context. He compared life to a theater.
Similarly, Carl Jung believed everyone had one or multiple Personas – the outward identity we create to navigate society – and a Shadow – the hidden, less socially acceptable parts of ourselves, such as dressing differently, being loud, or showing a tattoo. The Persona is like a “mask” we wear to conform to expectations. Jung believed that over-identifying with the Persona could lead to a loss of authenticity.
Jung’s concept of Personas and Shadow applies very well to work; If our Work Persona differs too much from the person we truly are, our Shadow, we risk a loss of authenticity. Jung warned that when we confuse our mask with our identity, we lose something vital — our sense of self. We become the role, the resume, the Slack status. But deep down, the parts of us that don’t fit that mold — the messy, honest, human bits — start knocking. Loudly.
According to Jungians, a loss of authenticity can start to feel like a spiritual or existential numbness or lead to burnout, anxiety, or passive-aggressiveness.
Ultimately, I think DEIB work is about preventing our Work Persona from diverging too far from our Shadow. By not forcing anyone to be someone they are not, we relieve people from forced acting at work. We allow our colleagues to be comfortable to be themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, though. Having a Work Persona can be very natural and okay. There are people who have a different persona at work than at home and are happy with it. The problem comes when we are forced to have a persona we do not want.
Value Misalignments Link to heading
I know a person who hates the expression “work-life balance”. They think work also is life. I agree! My friend instead always says “non-work-work balance”. Work is part of life, not excluded from it.
If we do not include work in our lives, I believe we risk our Work Persona to distance itself from our Shadow. We risk not living by our true values at work. Our true selves.