On your best behaviour

I know someone who, when you meet him in a pub, appears to be one of the most laid-back, casual people in existence. Meet him in his lab however, and he’s a completely different person. Strict is an understatement: you won’t make it within sight of the door if you’re not wearing appropriate clothing and PPE, and woe betide you if you don’t put equipment back in its proper place when you’ve finished using it.

While this is a fairly extreme personality switch, many of us have different work and home personas. Sometimes this is a good thing; attempts to parent your co-workers are likely to make everyone feel uncomfortable and talking to your children in corporate jargon would be distinctly odd.

But other changes are more detrimental. You might feel obliged to change your behaviour in ways that do not improve how you work, such as suppressing neurodivergent traits or changing your accent. Or you can find yourself becoming someone you don’t like – if the pressures of a project turn you into a micromanager, for example.

Excluding cases of discrimination and where insufficient reasonable adjustments have been provided, often what drives the adoption of a work personality are the professional norms in effect in a workplace or wider industry. Particularly when you’re early in your career or new to a job, it can be hard to differentiate between those norms that are necessary to your work and those that persist just because that’s how things have always been. Once you’ve got used to acting in those ways yourself, it can be hard to break the habit.

The people most likely to feel they have to adopt a new persona against their natural inclinations are those that lack the power to defy unnecessary workplace rules, perhaps because they’re in a junior role or are a member of a disadvantaged group. As with so many workplace culture issues, change can only come from higher up. Mindful feedback from managers and well-thought-out HR policies can help ensure that employees are judged by their performance, not their personal traits – and that they receive the support they need to be more like themselves at work.

That said, having a work personality can have benefits. Having to behave in ways that take you slightly outside your comfort zone can prove that you’re capable of more than you imagined (though there’s a fine line to draw here, as going too far beyond your limits can lead to burnout). And shifting how you act outside of work can help you destress and enforce boundaries between your job and the rest of your life – just like taking off a uniform at the end of the day.