A post on LinkedIn caught my attention this week.  It’s had over 11,000 views so I’m not alone. Tanya de Grunwald and Dr. Julie Scanlon had an announcement about the launch of a podcast here and here that you can also read below.

The title caught my attention and then the topics, some of which have been rumbling about in my brain particularly now I am no longer on the hamster wheel. 

🔥 How have good intentions around diversity, inclusion and wellbeing turned into bad business for so many employers?

🔥 Were concepts like ‘bring your whole self to work’ and ‘psychological safety’ always a bad idea?

🔥 When did we lose the ability to disagree agreeably at work – and can we learn to argue well again?

🔥 Why can’t employers find external trainers they can trust?

🔥 How has limp leadership has become the norm, especially among those who claim to be ‘brave’ and ‘purposeful’?

🔥 Why are people so weird on LinkedIn?

Lots to chew on.  It promises to be a refreshing and entertaining insight into the contemporary workplace and its discontents, an antidote to the emollients of mindlessness, and a break for those who’ve had enough of the inclusion intrusion but also want a work environment that is diverse, welcoming, and productive. 

🔥‘Bring your whole self to work’ and ‘psychological safety’ Were they always a bad idea?

The implication is that they are now. Is that true?

I’ve thought about this one. Especially now that I don’t take any self to work  – authentic or otherwise. I understand the good intentions of this new workplace mantra. It’s a corrective to all those years of exclusion and discrimination.

In my work in schools, it was always important to me that all students and their families of all kinds felt it was their school too. I rarely lost my temper but a kid being othered aka bullied for being different was the usual cause for the full over-the-top freak-out. 

And similarly with teachers and staff. It was important to me that people knew that every role was important and no one was marginal to the purpose. I’m not saying I succeeded in any of this, just that this was very important to me. All people matter and all jobs are important and should be respected and valued. People should not have to hide or pretend, be ashamed of where they come from, or be afraid of discrimination. Well, most of them at least. 

The Authentic Self

These days the buzzwords for this are inclusion and belonging and being your authentic self. It’s usually rolled into the diversity work, which of course makes sense.

As with everything, there’s a downside. With our identity obsession and the prioritizing of personality and personal predilections peculiarities and peccadillos the potential for workplace discord and discomfort rises.

Do we really want to take our true selves to work? How exhausting! Wouldn’t we rather take a break from that and focus instead on taking our best and professional selves so that we can focus on the actual work and not on ourselves? And do we want to deal with the authentic lives of colleagues? All of them? All the time? Sounds like an HR and productivity nightmare.

Schools are not typical workplaces in this respect. After all the focus really should be on the students and their learning and not on us as the alleged adults. Teachers are not robots of course and teacher eccentricity has been the lifesaving lightening for students for time immemorial. While they should seek to create a neutral political environment that embraces diversity of thought and expression, teachers also have lives. And while those lives belong outside the classroom, teachers are human too. 

Consider the extreme – the Canadian shop teacher with the ginormous prosthetic breasts. The school district supported his right to self-identify and it accommodated his “authentic self “at work. It dismissed the concerns and discomfort of students, parents, and colleagues. Should it have done? What are the alternatives?

I can think of many so-called authentic selves of people that I think have no place being foisted on anyone let alone children. But that’s just me. 

Lived Experience

It all got me thinking about some of the people I have worked with congenially in various paid and volunteer capacities over the years. All those with strange or unusual hobbies, beliefs, habits, and obsessions. All those oddball and eccentric individuals – some of whom you could say were borderline and one or two fully over the edge. For the most part, they kept their authentic selves out of the workplace, and for that one can only be grateful. 

• the shoplifter who managed the accounts,
• the convicted pedophile who took care of the pets
• the “baby farmer” who had served time for fraud
• the English teacher who didn’t wear underwear so his jeans were more form-fitting
• the teacher who always had a New Testament in his shirt pocket that he ostentatiously referred to in faculty meetings
• the  teacher (much missed) who muttered she was “making a doll” whenever asked to do something that she did not like
• the school librarian who was mysteriously arrested by the FBI at lunchtime
• the school administrator with a compulsion to steal rural road signs and, when arrested, was found to have a garage full of them,
• and a whole raft of people whose personal habits, fetishes, kinks, and religious and political opinions would have caused distraction and disruption if put on full display at work.

And of course – I’ve not even started on the “psychological safety’ bit yet. Oh, boy!