Should I Share My PERSONAL Life at Work? (ep.153‪)‬ Talk About Talk - Communication Skills Training

Should I share my personal life at work? This is about boundaries and navigating your professional identity. Andrea shares 3 real risks to sharing your personal life at work, then 3 levels of benefits. The balance between sharing personal information and maintaining professional boundaries is delicate and can significantly affect workplace culture, individual well-being, and even your own career trajectory.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Whenever this topic of sharing your personal life at work comes up, I always think of this experience I had about 10 years ago. I was serving as an advisor for a small private firm. I respected the CEO very much. He sent an e-mail out to all of the advisors asking us to submit to him our corporate bios for the website. At the bottom of his email request, he said something like, “Please make sure you include some personal details at the end. We all know that people tend to like us better when we add some personal details to the bottom of our professional bio.”

 

I remember thinking:  Is that true?  Seems possible. I want to see the research!

 

I get this Q a lot in the workshops and coaching I do.  Men and women both ask me about this. Should we talk about our hobbies? Should I mention that I run ultra marathons?? Should I mention that I do stand up comedy on the weekends? Or that I look after my partner’s elderly parents? Should I mention that I have a newborn at home?

 

In this episode, I’m going to share with you what the academic research says about specific reasons that we should or perhaps should not share our private or personal life at work.  The advantages and disadvantages, if you will. 

 

The answer to this question of “should we share our personal life at work?” does not have a simple yes or no answer. I would think of it more as a checklist or a series of considerations. My goal is to help you make informed decisions about whether and what to share about your personal life at work, depending on your PERSONAL context. Sound good?

 

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 153, sharing your personal life at work.  

 

In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!

I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you – to elevate your communication, your confidence, and your clarity, so you can establish credibility, and accomplish your career goals.

 

If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week. 

 

Alright let’s get into this.

 

A few years ago, at the beginning of COVID, I was doing small group personal branding workshops for se...