Your boss cries, but you’re the one getting fired

If you had told Ryan Caldbeck, at his first job, that he would one day be crying to a room full of his employees, he might simply have said – with the arrogance characteristic of any corporate fighter – that you were wrong.

But somewhere between tumultuous markets and indecisive national discourses on mental health, Caldbeck’s perspective has shifted. In 2016, he laid off around 15% of his 45-person team at fintech company CircleUp and burst into tears. Now, he said, he more openly shares his feelings with colleagues. He also sometimes struggles to find the line between executive containment and oversharing.

“There was a time when I went to work, and at a meeting, we were walking around the room saying how the weekend was, and I was like, ‘Oh, I had a tough fight with my wife,'” said Caldbeck, 43, who has was CEO of CircleUp. “Everyone gaped. I realized I went too far. It wasn’t appropriate. That’s not how you show vulnerability at work.”

CEOs have long studied how to deliver good news and bad news. They trained themselves to come up with great ideas and topple mediocre ones. Now they have a new skill to learn: the art of being vulnerable.

Emotional intelligence topped the lists of best-selling management manuals, such as “Dare to Lead” [Ouse para liderar], (ed. Random House, from R$54.69 ebook), by Brené Brown, whose books on vulnerability have sold well over 1 million copies. At the Stanford School of Business Administration, the most popular elective for years was Interpersonal Dynamics, commonly referred to as “Touchy Feely.” [algo como “sensível e delicado”].

“People in companies are socialized to leave their feelings in the parking lot,” said Carole Robin, co-author of “Connect” (ed. Currency, from R$21.53 ebook), who used to teach “Touchy Feely.” “Today there is a generation of leaders – who may really be the promising leaders of the future – who have discovered that it is actually almost impossible to inspire people if there are no feelings.”

So, as companies face a challenging economic time, executives are striving to let their employees know that they are not just empty suits. They are human, with emotions, which they share on Twitter, in memoirs and at work meetings. But your employees don’t always benefit from the results of all this openness. And, in some cases, they feel pressured to respond to their bosses by giving up their privacy.

“Too much information can lead to more vulnerability than you want,” said Robin, who has noted the difference between appropriate and inappropriate vulnerability in the workplace.

Braden Wallake recently laid off two of his 17 employees at HyperSocial, the sales and marketing company he runs. He later took to LinkedIn to post his thoughts. “This will be the most vulnerable thing I will ever share,” he wrote.

Wallake, 32, has always tended toward vulnerability, an approach to leadership he attributes to podcaster Joe Rogan. The executive organizes a weekly “wins call” where employees talk about successes in their professional and personal lives. He traveled the country parking his van on the sidewalks of some of his employees (including the home of one he had just laid off). When he burst into tears moments after he fired two workers, he didn’t think to hide his emotional reaction. He took a tearful selfie for LinkedIn.

“I just want people to see that not every CEO is insensitive,” Wallake wrote. “I know it’s unprofessional to tell my employees I love them. But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know that.”

The reaction was quick. The post generated more than 10,000 comments, many noting that Wallake emphasized his own pain at a time when his employees were suffering.

“This vulnerability of ‘you don’t know how hard it is for me to fire you’ is something people can stop doing, please,” said Edward Sullivan (ed. Harper Business, from $22.18 ebook) , executive coach and co-author of “Leading With Heart” [Liderando com coração].

Nancy Rothbard, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied emotions in the workplace, said her research points to a growing expectation that people will bring their “whole selves” to work, motivated by technologies that erase divisions between work and life. Research indicates that people tend to prefer segmenting their professional and personal lives rather than integrating them. But often they don’t feel they have that option.

Julie Brosnan, who works in communications in Washington, recalled preparing for morning meetings with her boss at a previous job, when they covered topics like, “What did you do last night? What did you do last weekend? ?”. Then the boss talked about his family quarrels, his husband and his affair.

Brosnan’s managers referred to the team as “family.” One worker’s business was everyone’s business. Brosnan was constantly answering questions about her children, family life, and how she spent her paid time off.

“If I was on break, everyone would come up to me and say, ‘Where were you on Friday?'” she recalled. “If I said, ‘I’m going to the dentist,’ they’d say, ‘What did you do at the dentist?’ Like, I don’t know!”

It’s a delicate balance. Many executives are relieved that the companies they run don’t have the stifling environments they’ve become accustomed to when starting their careers.

Andy Dunn, for example, co-founder of apparel company Bonobos and manager of Pumpkin Pie, a social app startup, recently gathered his employees on a video call to tell them about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which is the subject of a book that He wrote. released this year.

“Once I started talking, I kind of shared too much,” he said. He hung up and immediately sent a Slack message to his CTO asking if the conversation had been a “disaster”.

Still, Dunn found that his own vulnerability provoked emotional revelations from his employees. One person told him that she was feeling lonely in her current stage of life.

“Was she telling me these things at a different time? I don’t know,” Dunn said, adding that he feels his team benefits from this openness.

The CEO of dating app Hinge, Justin McLeod, recalled the relief he felt at being completely straightforward with his team when the company was reevaluating its business model in 2016, facing stiff competition from Tinder. McLeod laid off half of his team, so he knew he couldn’t protect the rest from facing turmoil.

“You can sweeten as much as you want, but it makes people feel less confident in the lead,” he said.

America’s economic turmoil has presented a new set of emotional challenges for business leaders. Ariane Goldman, founder of startup Hatch, which sells maternity clothes, has tried to strike a balance between shielding her staff from their own anxieties and being candid about the market’s difficulties.

“It’s really a positive thing for your team to understand where you’re coming from,” she said. “I’m a founding CEO, not just a corporate gun for hire, so I bring that baggage to the table with me.”

With the strong job market, some people are realizing that they can seek work environments that make them feel more comfortable and leave behind bosses who cross borders.
Brosnan, for example, now has a chat group with friends who vent their frustrations about boundaries in the workplace. Some feel that their peers ask them to reveal too much; others feel very distant from teammates, especially when they frequently interact with them via video calls. Now Brosnan, who has just started a new job, has finally found an ideal position.

“There is no expectation that I should show pictures of my son or comment on why I’m on leave,” she said. “We don’t force it, but we are open and receptive to hearing about it if you’re having a hard time.”