A friend once told me I was like a peacock in a yard full of chickens. This has been one of my favorite compliments. Since my young adulthood, I have taken pride in my individualistic approach to life. Why would I want to be like everyone else?
As an adult in the workforce, however, I sometimes wonder whether it’s not better to be a chicken if you’re in a yard full of chickens. In today’s work world, depersonalization seems to be the word of the day.
To Blur or Not to Blur
The fun of seeing colleagues’ home spaces on video calls during the pandemic has given way to the ubiquitous blurred background. Or, if not the blur, then a false background.
I appreciate privacy concerns and the need to avoid offending customers inadvertently with a piece of art or knickknack in an employee’s home office, but you lose so much when you can’t see meeting participants’ real backgrounds. You lose a sense of who they are as a person. Is there a dog or cat in the background? A child scampering or photo bombing? Is it neat and tidy and minimalistic in style, or cluttered with memorabilia from travels?
You should never mandate that real backgrounds be shared, but should you discourage or mandate against it?
“I’m OOO”
I did something I think some may have looked askance at when I turned 50 in June. I didn’t send out the impersonal “I’m OOO” (out of office) auto-response e-mail. Instead, I titled the e-mail, “I’m on vacation,” and within the body of the e-mail I let everyone know I was on vacation in Paris celebrating my 50th birthday. I went on to let them know I would not be responding to messages at all during this time.
And I didn’t leave it at that—I told an executive I thought it would be nice gesture if the company could give the few employees in our part of the company who were turning 50 in 2025 a birthday dinner. I said this only half tongue-in-cheek. I laughed that it would be good for our morale. I was sort of joking, but I do think personalized gestures such as dinners for employees celebrating the same milestone birthday is energizing. It sends a message to employees that the company not only knows it’s your birthday, but that it’s a special birthday.
Tone It Up
You never want to be rude or offensive in an e-mail, but I think it’s good when some emotion is shown, especially when it’s genuine. I once had a boss who sent me an e-mail in which even the greeting at the beginning and his signature at the end was followed by a period (Hello Margery.). Was he annoyed? Brusque? Did he just love periods? It was almost like he was trying to mimic the dryness of a robot.
I use exclamation points liberally and often will not just say, “Thanks” or “Thank you” at the end but “Thank you very much.” What’s more, I usually start with a greeting such as “Hi, X,” rather than just using the person’s name with a comma.
I like to have a small sense of my true feelings come through in my e-mails. With artificial intelligence drafting e-mails these days, there may be something to be gained by showing signs of the presence of real human warmth.
Go Ahead, Decorate that Workspace!
I once had a corporate nabob come up to my cubicle and ask me to remove my beloved co-worker, Alfred Alfredo, from the top of my cubicle wall. Alfred was a green foam frog on a wire who stuck up from my cubicle, letting everyone know where to find me. I also had a rubber chicken and multiple rubber duckies and a mug full of pens with anthropomorphic heads with rubber hair. I called these pens “The Margerys.” The same friend who gave me the compliment about being a peacock in a yard full of chickens told me that stopping by my cubicle was like stopping by a museum. She was joking, but it was true in a way.
Nothing in that cubicle was precious enough to be in a museum. But it was a museum. It was the Museum of Margery.
Is there a place in your company for each employee to create their own museum to showcase who they truly are to colleagues—and even customers?
How much self-expression and individualism do you encourage in your workplace?