The Mask

Posted by Rich Crowley in people

Most of my working life, I have found that people in the workplace come in two flavours: those that wear a mask and those that don’t. Those that don’t wear a mask are the classic “what you see is what you get”. I believe these are in the small minority.

I believe most of us do wear some form of mask. I’m certainly in this latter camp. We put on our work mask before we enter our place of work because there are elements of our personalities that we either don’t want to show at work or that we perceive would not help us in the workplace if we showed them. Some of these things may be things we view as weaknesses in ourselves.

What’s interesting to me is that if you can get behind people’s masks, you’ll get a much clearer picture of what motivates them, what prompts them to make decisions in certain ways, what they are really trying to accomplish.

Our masks also tend to be much less revealing in new places. We don’t want to reveal weaknesses until our strengths are established.

Trying to see behind the masks of people is an interesting way to get a handle on situations that seem to defy reason based on the people involved.