god forbade...must reading

Autonomous Workers

     Russ Eisenstat's research has led him to believe that people who do not feel forced to compartmentalize, people who are able to bring their whole selves to the job and can connect what they do at work to a meaningful larger purpose are happier. The companies who employ such people are, by extension, more successful.

     But not all employers like the look of that kind of power. Why not? Because people in that happy groove are often people who care a lot about the product. Sometimes they care much more than their employer or immediate superior does. They're difficult to argue with. Ask them to compromise on a strategy or workflow or company output, and you're essentially asking them to compromise their values, their integrity, their very selves.

    We have a term for such stubbornly integrated people who refuse to check their personas at the door when they sit down to work. We call them freelancers. Called in to help with specific projects, they bring their specific, highly developed skills to the table, and when said project is done, they move on. Unless they are experiencing a severe cash flow drought, they tend not to contract for projects that require too much compromise. The self-employed swap steady paychecks for the joy of not having to apologize to the boss when a child's illness means they need to clock out at 3 p.m.

     Employees typically don't have that option. To keep their job or keep peace with colleagues, they're more likely to be put into a position where they're just following orders. Even at a time when forward-thinking companies claim to have abandoned the old command-and-control model, the fact that the company signs the checks puts a proverbial thumb on the scale.

     We may enjoy our own full selves, but other people's full selves can be downright offensive. Introducing greater transparency into the workplace could lead to peppier employees. It could just as easily lead to stronger, more personal resentments.

     Small surprise, then, that the very first books about how to succeed in business cautioned against being too comfortable in the office.

      "No doubt there are a few men who can look beyond the husk or shell of a human being, his angularities, awkwardness, or eccentricity, to the hidden qualities within,"

       William Mathews wrote,

         "But the majority are neither so sharp-eyed nor so tolerant."

     There are good ways to bring one's full self to work, even for an employee who can't shake the sense that some shadowy IT person is reading over their shoulder every time they compose an email. But outside of a corporate environment in which employees are treated like adults who can decide for themselves when it's all right to clock out at 3, or a broader culture in which people are comfortable with disagreement and confrontation, meaningful progress is going to be difficult.

     Tell a Dutch professional, for example, that his project proposal reminds you of work you did in high school, and chances are you two will still share a companionable after-work Amstel. Try something similar in a Minneapolis boardroom, and you may not be invited back.

Megan Hustad

Fortune Magazine