Don’t take this personal. It’s just business…Is it though?
Don’t take this personal. It’s just business.
How many times have you heard this saying, or maybe even experienced it?
I have noticed that many times, we tend to make a distinction between the ‘personal me’ and the ‘professional me’. We tend to separate work from everything else going on in our lives. And in most cases it ends up being an ‘emotion vs reason’ type of thing.
I bet a lot of people still fear showing emotions at work; that there is still this mindset that you have to leave your worries, anxieties and fears outside the office doors, that when you’re at work the focus should be on productivity and efficiency.
But can we really do that?
Can we really leave our emotions and backgrounds outside the office setting and focus on the daily tasks and hitting those KPIs? Or a better question: should we?
We are not professional assets. And we are not human resources. We are human.
After all, the person that wakes up in the morning and goes to work is the same person that comes back home. The feelings, the beliefs, and the values we have, follow us in whatever context we find ourselves. Wether we communicate and display them transparently is another question.
The fact is that we spend 1/3 of our lives at work!!!
As writer Annie Dillard said “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”. This incredible amount of time spent at work has a huge impact on our quality of life. There is no way any person can just turn on and off the professional switch. And again, it’s not so much about ‘can’ as it is about ’should’.
In the end, it all comes down to basic human relationships, showing empathy and understanding in any context.
What if we started treating each other as if we really care and as if we really matter?
A few weeks ago I had a very insightful discussion with Roxana Radulescu, a personal skills coach, that shared that the change she wants to see in the world is more empathetic communication. If we remember that the person we talk to, at work or in another setting, is another human being that comes with his/her personal stories, and is not so different from us, we would start having better conversations, and with that, better relationships.
So, coming back to the beginning of this article:
Nothing is just business. It’s all personal.
As long as business is done by people and involves people, it is all personal. And as Roxana mentioned during our interview:
‘It is interpersonal and intrapersonal. The way I think about myself is going to reflect in the way I talk and relate to you. ‘
Empathetic communication starts with self-awareness.
First, you need to know who you are, and most importantly be comfortable with that. And second, when you stop judging yourself, you stop judging others.
But reaching that self-awareness is a really messy process, and it involves asking very difficult questions: What do I want to do? Did I always want to do this? What makes me happy? What am I good at?
These are not questions that you can answer in one go. And these are not questions that you ask yourself only once. It is more of an exercise that you need to perform regularly.
To sum it up,
- All is personal, nothing is just business.
- It is all about communication and relationship building, regardless of the context.
- Engaging in empathetic communication requires self-awareness.
- Self-awareness requires regular training.
You can listen to our full interview below:
Thanks for reading!
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