The CEO Cried

The generation that needed therapy pets to get through college has now joined the workforce. And given their understanding that the good life is the therapeutic life they have started bringing their private lives and their personal feelings into the workplace. It feels like the next great thing, so Times reporter Emma Goldberg takes a stab at making some sense of it. Goldberg is one of the better young writers out there, so we take her analysis seriously. 

She is fair and balanced, and she remarks that sharing too much creates problems. If all things private are allowed into the workplace, how long will it be before people will decide that they go to work to get dates or that they should be exposing their private parts to their colleagues. 

Of course, this has already been happening, far too much. Now we have teary eyed CEOs, professing their vulnerability because they read in a book by a dopey thinker, by the name of Brene Brown, a purveyor of psychobabble and girltalk, that great leaders show their vulnerability. 

At a time when the issue is wrapped in confusion, let’s state a few obvious points. Great leaders do not display their vulnerability. They do not throw raves at the prime minister’s residence. They do not share their doubts and do not make decisions based on empathy. Did Gen. Eisenhower share his doubts about his troops, or did he show confidence in their ability carry out their missions?

One exception needs to be noted-- when a leader has failed, he ought to resign in disgrace. He will then manifest shame and do the appropriate thing-- to give up his leadership. Once he displays his shame, he can no longer lead.

As for those leaders, like Bill Clinton, who share their feelings promiscuously, they are not leading the nation. They are seducing people into voting for them and into ignoring their serial derelictions. In that case, it matters less whether the plan or the policy will succeed than whether or not you love the leader, whether you feel his pain, empathetically.

So, your pathos has no business in the workplace. Keep it to yourself. Sharing your pathos makes you pathetic, of course. You should do so especially if you want anyone to respect you.

If you do not command respect you will never be able to lead. If you do not have confidence in your project, why will those you entrust with executing it have any confidence in it? And if they do not have confidence in it, they will surely perform less well.

Consider a case that Goldberg recounts:

If you had told Ryan Caldbeck, in his first-ever job, that he would one day be crying to a room full of his employees, he might have simply told you — with the bluster characteristic of any corporate striver — that you were wrong.

But somewhere in between tumultuous markets and shifting national conversations on mental health, Mr. Caldbeck’s perspective changed. In 2016, he laid off roughly 15 percent of his 45-person team at the financial technology company CircleUp, and broke down in tears. Now, he said, he shares his feelings with colleagues more openly. He also sometimes wrestles to find the line between buttoned-up executive reticence and oversharing.

“There was a time when I went into work, and in a meeting we were going around the room saying how was your weekend, and I said, ‘Oh, I got in a difficult fight with my wife,’” said Mr. Caldbeck, 43, who was previously CircleUp’s chief executive. “Everyone’s mouth dropped. I realized I went too far. That wasn’t appropriate. That’s not how to show vulnerability at work.”

Fair enough, this is pathetic. When you cry over laying people off, what that means is that you yourself have failed and that you yourself refuse to take any responsibility for your failure.

As for sharing some information from your marriage, betraying a marital confidence, you do not need to be very smart or very adult to know not to do so. And then, why would anyone ever confide in you or trust you? And how will your wife react when she discovers that you have spoken about your intimate interactions with her?

Somehow or other, a specifically feminine quality, vulnerability, has become the rage in business schools. Obviously, this means that more women are taking these courses, but it also means that the American business world has lost touch with what made it great.

Now they have a new skill to learn: the art of being vulnerable. Emotional intelligence has landed atop the lists of best-selling management guides, like “Dare to Lead,” by Brené Brown, whose books on vulnerability have sold well over a million copies. At the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the most popular elective course, for years, has been Interpersonal Dynamics, more commonly referred to as “Touchy Feely.”

Evidently, this does not make us optimistic about the future. Consider that the same dimwitted executives who are hiring Brene Brown to teach them how to be vulnerable are also hiring a manifest idiot named Ibram X. Kendi to explain how racist they are:

“People in business are socialized to leave their feelings in the parking lot,” said Carole Robin, co-author of “Connect,” who used to teach “Touchy Feely.” “There’s a generation of leaders now — the ones that might be the really up-and-coming leaders of the future — who have discovered that actually it’s almost impossible to really inspire people in the absence of feelings.”

There is obviously a downside of this oversharing. Goldberg explains that it is a violation of privacy and that, by the rules of reciprocity, when someone exposes himself to you, you will naturally feel inclined to expose yourself to him-- whether you like it or not.

They’re humans, with emotions, which they’re sharing on Twitter, in memoirs and in all-staff meetings. But their employees aren’t always benefiting from the results of all that sharing. And, in some cases, they’re feeling pressured to respond to their bosses by giving up their own privacy.

Goldberg continues on this point:

But many workers have pointed out that when those emotional conversations go too far, they can create pressure to share what people would rather keep private.

“In the old regime, it used to be that strength came from putting your emotions to the side,” said Hitendra Wadhwa, a professor at Columbia Business School who teaches about personal leadership. He added that those previous misconceptions had given way to new ones: “There are those struggling with the misunderstanding that strength comes from ‘if I’m feeling this right now, I just have to express it.’”

Nancy Rothbard, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who has studied emotions in the workplace, said her research pointed to a growing expectation that people bring their “full selves” to work, prompted by technologies that blur the lines between work and life.

The best part is that managers, thinking that this is the next great thing, are doing what most people do not want them to do.

 Surveys indicate that people tend to prefer segmenting their professional and personal lives instead of integrating them. But often they don’t feel they have the option.

The result is, you teach people to complain. And yet, complaining undermines group cohesion and wastes time and effort. So, we have a new generation of whiners entering the business world. Watch out below.