Is it just me or do LinkedIn posts seem to be getting more personal? My contacts are sharing much more about family, posting about their health, giving their views on current politics...
Perhaps as people drift away disillusioned and fatigued from their other social media platforms, they continue to need an outlet for the personal and how/what they are doing and being in their broader life?
This is good. Being our authentic selves at work, right?
Yes, to a point.
Pre-pandemic I was a separator, you’d find me in either work mode or home mode. I didn’t really talk about my family, my holidays or my weekend much with my colleagues. Earlier in my career this was because I didn’t want to discuss wider life commitments in case my non-full-time-work pattern looked like part interested, part ambitious.
Thankfully we’ve moved on, we get work-life balance priorities better now. Shame it took the horror and pain of a two-year global pandemic to move the needle, but we are where we are.
I find myself continuing to (mostly) keep home/work as two spheres. Maybe that feels quaint or slightly archaic to others. It’s certainly not very Millennial or Gen Z.
But it enables me to give my full focus to work and home commitments whilst handling any guilt that one aspect of life might be missing out on me. It also means I have razor-sharp focus and concentration, wicked time management and well-honed boundary setting skills. All of this is good for mental health and well-being.
In my coaching work with individuals who are making the transition to becoming working parents or carers or both, I like to explore how much we ‘narrate’ about our wider lives…and to whom?
Perhaps the other working parent in your team is interested in your child’s first day at nursery but another colleague might be bored by all the details and can’t really get enthused. Maybe they’d prefer to talk puppy training? Or travel plans?
It’s good to check in with yourself. Who’s interested? What does this chat say/do for your professional profile? Maybe the increasingly personalised content on LI suggests we are missing some discipline around this. But does it matter?
Always worth asking the question. We’ve probably all got beautifully different and unique responses.
I guess it’s highly personal 😉