This comment: "I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy."
How did "if you’re comfortable" become "forcing me", and "try and be 10% more vulnerable" become "group therapy"?
Like will anyone care? Probably not but it's an incredibly awkward situation to toss people into when they're at work.
which would probably even work okay because everyone loves and applauds a success story or something that isn't your fault, but imagine someone sharing their ongoing drug addiction. People who think that workplaces are "safe" spaces for personal issues should try envisioning what the reaction to that would be.
It would be OK to discuss drug addiction with your parents. It would not be OK to discuss steamy night with your wife with them.
It's almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable and what is 10% they can bend the rules if they want to switch the mood a little.
Honestly it's hilarious how supposedly emotionally mature people panic and over-analyse in this thread.
Apparently not because in TFA, the author shared personal facts about their divorce and other people shared even "deeper" things they'd "never heard in a work setting". Quote: "it was awkward".
These aren't things that belong in a workplace context (sure, if you're going out for drinks after work maybe you can volunteer such things - but not during a workplace meeting!).
The boss mentioned above would be a “B” boss - good intentions, but a forced execution that shifts more of the burden to employees. I don’t necessarily mind these types, but it can be incredibly off-putting for those of us who work to live, rather than live to work.
Above that you have the “A” bosses, who invite that level of vulnerability by repeatedly displaying their trustworthiness to you and the team. I’ve had a few of these bosses before, and they’re amazing; sadly, they rarely last long in the face of “maximum profit” corporate cultures that demand everyone be a replaceable cog in a machine.
Okay, so at what point does that become “forced group therapy?” The C-D-F bosses.
C-rank bosses will demand vulnerability because they mistake it for honesty or loyalty. Good employees pick up on this and will placate them with some useless trivia nugget but otherwise have mediocre to bad rapport with said boss.
D-grade bosses are even worse. They’ll push and pull and drag and yank something suitably vulnerable from everyone, and even try to solutionize whatever was shared with the team. This is (in my subjective experience) the most common form of boss, born of MBA coursework and saddled with buzzword-laden articles of “how to be a better leader” from magazines no C-Suite would be caught dead reading.
Finally is the F-grade boss, who literally just wants to know who is going to need replacing imminently. Don’t get me wrong, this is something every other grade is silently doing as well (hence the “forced group therapy” metaphor), but F-grade bosses are bad enough to be overt about it. Got a coworker who mentions they’re trying to have a baby? They’ll make sure said coworker never has a positive review again, so it’s easier to replace them once they’re pregnant.
All of this is to say that if YOU are a boss, and an employee is being vulnerable with you in an unprompted or non-coerced manner, you have won their trust and you better respect that. But if you’re forcing them to be vulnerable somehow, you’re actually harming the trust relationship in the long run and will make your staff wary of your motives.
Prove they can trust you, and they’ll open up on their own.
Interesting to know. Seems people who reply here, a bit assume it's a group of competitive coworkers who mostly don't know each other, in a big cut-throat corp?
I'd been ok with that meeting at my first job (together with my closest coworkers only). It'd been weird at my 2nd job though. I guess it depends :-)
(But it wouldn't have been needed at all, there. I guess that's related to why it would have been ok.)
What does that even mean? Seems like it triggers people to share very deep stuff.