Why you should bring your true, messy self to work everyday

Why you should bring your true, messy self to work everydayWhy you should bring your true, messy self to work everydayFor decades, a buttoned-up, reserved work face welches the professional norm. You didnt talk about your life outside work, and as far as your boss was concerned, you didnt have one.Jerry Colonna,the cofounder and CEO of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm, recently summarized it on the On Being podcast as a mindset of, You leave the personal at the door - you dont bring it into the workplace. That got promulgated across multiple generations with people saying, Well, dont bring your feelings into work.Recently, that way of working fell out of fashion, with the whole self movement the idea of bringing your entire (sometimes messy, sometimes overbearing) self to work every day. Being yourself at work, Colonna said,Its that we create an environment in which people have the freedom and the invitation to be fully themselves and to actually find t he experience of being at work a means to becoming a more full human being and an adult - the art of growing up.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreBeing your authentic self at work was the subject of a recent study from several universities Rice, Xavier, Texas AM, the University of Memphis, Portland State University, and the University of California, Berkeley.The results? Bringing your entire self to work is healthier and more productive.After analyzing 65 previous studies on the results of employees revealing an oft-stigmatized trait, such as sexual orientation, mental illness, or pregnancy, researchers said their findings overwhelmingly indicate that those who are open regarding these non-visible traits are more productive at work and happier in life.Unfortunately, the same doesnt hold with more visible traits such as gender, race, or physical disabilities, researchers found.I dentities that are immediately observable operate differently than those that are concealable, said Eden King, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at Rice,in a release. The same kinds of difficult decisions about whether or not to disclose the identity not to mention the questions of to whom, how, when, and where to disclose the identities are probably less central to their psychological experiences.Still, according to this study, youll probably find that people at work appreciate gaining new information about you and may tell you something about themselves in return.