How Are You

Our co-workers are suffering right next to us, but we don't know it. How did we arrive at the situation where we can be shoulder to shoulder with a person for forty hours a week, but not feel okay telling them that we're sad today because of any number of reasons?

For a long time, corporate wisdom was to keep our corporate lives and personal lives separate. This is impossible unless we have a separate brain that we will put in our body once we get to the office.

When our co-workers are experiencing crisis, either their own or the crisis of someone they deeply care about, there is rarely enough time away from the office for full emotional recovery. Part of their recovery should be a workplace where there are people that they can connect with in an authentic and vulnerable way. Employee Assistance Programs are valuable, but we can't replicate the comfort of knowing that the people we labor with care for us beyond the utility of the work we produce.

We all must do the work to ensure our offices are emotionally safe places. We don't need deep relationships with every coworker, a few close relationships will do for most people. We need an environment where it is okay to share what pains us without being judged or diminished, without being seen as weak or overly emotional. We need our office to be a place where humans show each other compassion.