The Challenge of Personal Openness on the Job

Scripture — Nehemiah 2:1-2 (NRSV)

In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was served him, I carried the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence before. So the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.

Devotion

In the first chapter of the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, we meet the person of Nehemiah, a Jewish man serving the Persian king as his cupbearer. When Nehemiah received a report about the dire conditions in Jerusalem and the sorry state of the Jews in Judah, he “sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (1:4).

During this period of expressive sadness, Nehemiah kept his feelings to himself while he worked. He rightly understood that his personal emotions and struggles would generally not be welcome in the court of the king. While on the job, Nehemiah needed to exemplify ultimate professionalism and self-control.

But at some point, Nehemiah’s feelings began to show. He explains what happened in this way: “I carried the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence before. So the king said to me, ‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart’” (2:1-2). We don’t know for sure whether Nehemiah chose to reveal his feelings or whether he simply couldn’t hide them any longer. (I’m inclined to think that he was being strategically choiceful in this behavior. More on this later.) We do know, however, that when the king mentioned Nehemiah’s sadness, he was “very much afraid” (2:2). Nehemiah knew how unusual and ordinarily unacceptable it was for a servant of the king to show personal emotions as he had done.

We’ll examine Nehemiah’s response to the king in tomorrow’s devotion. For now, I’d like to reflect with you on the relational challenge of emotions in the workplace. Surely some emotions are typically welcome at work, such as happiness, enthusiasm, even occasional impatience or minor disappointment. But what about sharing deeper emotions, especially negative ones like anger, sadness, grief, fear, and so forth?

There isn’t a simple answer to this question. When and how we open our hearts on the job is clearly a major relational challenge. It requires plenty of self-awareness as well as careful attention to the culture of the place in which we work. In my current situation, for example, my boss, Michaela, has created a community in which team members care genuinely for each other. We have a fair amount of freedom at certain times to open our hearts in the context of our work. But in my dish room job when I was a freshman in college, I guarantee you that my boss would have been angry if I had mentioned my personal sadness or showed “sadness of the heart” in my face, as Nehemiah did with the king. Though I was desperately homesick and wracked with heartache, I knew enough to keep these things under wraps while at work.

I have been in work settings where people failed to wisely gauge the preferences of the boss and the cultural norms about sharing personal things at work. In one meeting, for example, one of my colleagues showed up twenty minutes late. When he apologized for his tardiness, he went on to explain in excessive detail that he and his wife had been arguing about something personal. I think everyone in the room, except for this man, recognized how inappropriate his explanation was. Several of us who knew him well would have been glad to listen to him later in private. But his public display was distracting, unsettling, and revealed a lack of relational maturity.

How might we respond to such behavior if it were to happen in our work teams? If you’re the boss, you might sensitively suggest that the late person hold off until you can meet with him one-on-one later. You might also say that, though team members care for each other personally, certain matters are best dealt with privately. If you’re a colleague and have a relationship with the late man, you might reach out to him after the meeting to check in and see how he’s doing. And, no matter what, you’d do well not to join in the gossip that likely follows such an awkward display.

It seems clear that personal openness on the job certainly involves multiple relational challenges. There are the questions of how much to share, when, how, where, and why. There’s the question of how to respond to the sharing of others. And if you’re the boss, there’s the question of how to shape your workplace culture so as best to serve your colleagues, your organization, your constituency, and your mission. In addition to these questions, we who follow Jesus also want to ask what it means for us to work and lead in distinctively Christian ways when it comes to personal openness.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project’s online commentary. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: The Grieving Leader.