Business is business. Personal life is personal life. Yet, the two will always overlap, intertwine, and impact one another. As a result, when something personal goes awry, staff members in AEC firms typically seek internal confidants for guidance or comfort. Officially, human resource professionals are the ‘go-to people’. Yet, I’ve noticed in client environments—as well as in my past experience working within AEC firms—that staff members tend to turn towards business development and marketing professionals as their ‘go-to’ confidants. Why? My guess is that BD/marketing folks are open, communicative…and appear the most inviting when it comes to seeking guidance, support, advice, etc. relating to personal situations.
So what do you do when you are the chosen confidant, and you learn some personal information about someone that you feel would benefit by sharing it with other people? To keep things simple, I’ll use examples relating instead to my work as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College:
- Example 1: A student has a chronic cough and has shared this with me on the side. It will not go away, and she will have to step out of class often, especially in the middle of presentations given by other classmates.
- Example 2: A student had a house fire which caused her to have special needs relating to due dates, shifts in assignment types, etc.
In both, I believed that sharing this information with the entire class would help the students to create better empathy and understanding of the situations Yet, these were not my stories to share. Instead, they were private stories of each student, neither of whom proactively chose to share openly with the others.
These same sorts of things happen at work. You find out that someone is going through a tough time in a marriage; has a health issue; dying parent; financial problem; difficult child; fights depression;….etc. And you see that this is impacting the person’s work and the perception of others towards their work. You want to help, but it’s not your story to tell, as you were told in confidence. What to do?
Depending upon your own resources and emotional bandwidth, any of these things might occur, and you may:
1. Be quite capable of suggesting, guiding, advising, or just listening with empathy/support.
2. Know in your heart that it’s something that the company itself needs to know—as it could have a direct, noticable negative impact on the firm itself.
3. Feel intuitively that it would help that individual’s cause if they were to make their situation more public.
If #1 is possible, then that’s great. They’ve chosen the right confidant—you. For #2, you really face a dilemma that must be resolved on a case-by-case basis, but most certainly you need to be careful in the future about what you agree to ‘hold in confidence’ before doing so. When it’s #3 (the main thrust of today’s blog) then I usually strongly encourage the individual to share their situation and/or to let me share it carefully on their behalf.
I am writing about this today because someone I know is currently in this situation (#3). I wonder, from my readers, if you have your own comments or advice regarding this circumstance, especially since many of you are business development professionals, and therefore are likely to be considered the ‘go-to’ people for the design and construction professionals in your firm.
Comments? Feel free to share in private if you feel more comfortable!