Personal life: what to tell and to whom?

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The secretary says to her boss:

- Sir, if you knew what gossip your deputy is spreading about you …

- All this is nonsense! The main thing is that he does not tell the truth.

Many of us, having come to work, share fresh impressions: a goat from the right lane prevented us from rebuilding, the child got sick, and for some reason my husband again wants to go downhill skiing during the winter holidays instead of warming up his wonderful ass somewhere further south … Colleagues are already accustomed to and listen favorably to the traditional morning "summary". But do you need that kind of attention? What should you tell employees about yourself and your personal life, and what shouldn't?

Curiosity, like fear, has large eyes, and ears and imagination are so simply immense. A colleague will pass it along the chain, embellish it to your taste, present a special case as a rule - and count everything, save on the image maker: if the circle closes and the information reaches you, you will learn a lot of new things about yourself. Even if your immediate interlocutors radiate benevolence and compassion, a "spoiled phone" will still bear fruit - people tend to make generalizations and stick labels, especially in cases where the information did not come first-hand.

A holy place is never empty. The information hunger of employees should be fed - for example, by stories about additional education in the specialty that you are receiving in parallel, or about your success in learning a foreign language.

But the best option is to ask questions and reasonably participate in discussions about the hobbies of your colleagues or your own hobbies, if they come up. When such conversations do not take place in the workplace, but, for example, in the smoking room or in the dining room, they perform three useful functions at once: they take the subject of the conversation away from the intimate details of your life, make it possible to please a colleague by showing a keen interest in his hobby, and satisfy a person's need for communication.

There is also an alternative point of view - personal information is necessary and important for improving relations with colleagues.

It is not at all necessary to devote everyone to the vicissitudes of your whirlwind romances, it is enough to share trifles, innocent situations, to criticize a husband-friend-mother-in-law a little … This is quite enough to build the image of "your man". As the proverb says: "Do not break away from the team, otherwise the team will break away without you."

If you have chosen such a tactic, keep in mind: although fraternization with colleagues is guaranteed to you, gossips do not sleep. This is inherent in our nature: the person spreading rumors feels like the center of attention, the owner of intimate information. In addition, discussing other people's problems helps to come to terms with their difficulties. So a gossip comes running to you to share intimate details of the biography of employees. If the narrator is not your best friend, proven by years and deeds, such revelations should awaken your suspicion. Listen to him calmly, without commenting on the information, and if the story is frankly unpleasant for you, do not hesitate to interrupt the interlocutor. The main thing is not to tell him anything personal about yourself or about others: such negligence can cost you dearly.

In cases where whispering behind your back could not be avoided, it makes sense, firstly, to imagine yourself in the place of your ill-wishers and try to soberly assess why this is happening and how justified it is. Secondly, do not give in to the temptation to sarcasm and "attach" the envious - responding with a slap in the face to a slap in the face, you sink to their level.

Finally, it is extremely important to maintain a calm professional style in dealing with these people, not to start conversations like "why don't you like me?" and not wash the bones of ill-wishers in a company with other colleagues.

There is another situation in which it is not recommended to talk too much, although often a truthful explanation does not hurt. It's about taking time off from work. If your reason for leaving is serious enough to be mentioned, outline it in general terms, but don't go into details. If the reason doesn't sound convincing, think of something more ponderous. The main thing is not to abuse early departures from work and late arrivals to it, and also not to expose your boss if he let you go. Such a disservice can be when you tell your colleague about exactly which weak points of your boss you pressed to get your way, or your joyful screams after you were let go.

From the point of view of leaders, personal information circulating in the team is both good and evil. On the one hand, it is undoubtedly useful for the boss to know how employees live outside of work and how they relate to the atmosphere in the office. The main thing is that the information regularly reaches the "tsar" - and he will decide what to do with it, whom to execute, and whom to have mercy on.

But in fact, the spread of gossip is a worrying symptom.

In a normal team, the balance between gossip and lack of personal information tends to the golden mean. And sometimes conversations "for life" become an additional factor uniting subordinates: a Russian is traditionally shy to "sit up" and bypass in a race on the career ladder with whom he went to the smoking room and washed bones for his friends-partners, and sometimes for his superiors.

Gossip is not always aimed at removing a competitor or playing a dirty trick on your neighbor. There is information that is brought to the ears of the bosses with a noble goal: to help a colleague. There are times when a woman with a small child is embarrassed to take time off from work in order to take the child to the clinic or sit with him while he is sick: it seems to her that the limit of her requests is not unlimited and sooner or later she will have to wait for a letter of leave at work " at will ". But if her colleague knows that the boss is not aware of the situation, then a timely hint to the boss will ensure that the woman is allowed to go home to the child with the flu and even get medical insurance.

And what about the leader himself? Does he need to share with his subordinates the details of his personal life? It all depends on the management style and corporate ethics of the company. If it is accepted in the company that employees address each other as "you", dress strictly in accordance with the dress code and observe the table of ranks, then it probably makes sense to talk less about the personal. On the other hand, in companies where employees communicate with customers exclusively on the phone, and within the team they talk on equal terms, the manager can afford to add a personal touch so as not to look like a "beech".

Most modern Russian companies are of a mixed type, and each boss has the right to choose his own style of communication with subordinates, which is optimally adapted to the situation and tasks set by the manager.

Of course, there are certain rules of the game, but in general, the reaction of others is impossible to predict. In a healthy team, it cannot do without curiosities: in one company, the head of the department from time to time remembered his own mother-in-law with a not very kind word and vividly complained that he was entitled to milk for being harmful. After another excursion into the family history, the employees could not stand it and, having agreed in advance among themselves, the next day they brought the sufferer a carton of milk each. The company was large, the department was also rather big. In general, can you imagine the scale of the disaster ?!