Ask a Manager: Am I Oversharing?

[minoanmiss]

. Did I overshare with my boss?

I am a young professional who recently started a new job and I really enjoy working there. My boss is a nice guy. We get on very well and we regularly have friendly discussions (my desk is in front of his office and I am his assistant so he frequently talks to me about his weekend or kids).

I have a sibling in Ukraine and there is a lot of stress in my life surrounding that. I don’t talk about the situation all of the time, but my boss has asked about them a few times and when there is a major situation change, like leaving a combat zone or going back into a combat zone, I will mention it to him (probably once every 4-6 weeks). I thought it was a good idea for him to know about my connection to the crisis and a major stressor in my life, but a friend has warned me that sharing too much with a boss is a bad idea since if the company thinks I am too distracted by what is happening, they might choose not to renew my contract or my boss might choose not to give me new responsibilities because of the stress I am dealing with. I am still on probation so I am trying not to mess this up. Did I overshare by talking about my sibling’s situation in Ukraine? I obviously care more about my sibling than anything else, but I really need this job too.

How much to share with a boss is always a judgment call (based on the relationship and what you know of how they operate), but if your friend is giving that as blanket advice (not specific to your dynamics with this particular boss) they’re overreacting. Assuming that you’re performing well and are focused most of the time when you’re at work, there’s nothing wrong with sharing something like this with a boss who you get along with and who seems like a generally decent and caring person. Your friend is being excessively cautious.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I dunno. I think that LW is lucky and in general her friend is right.

What if LW's boss supported the invasion? (a non-negligible number of Americans do) or found LW annoying or so on? I can totally find it plausible that someone might decide "this person is distracted by having family in a warzone so we will turn her mistakes into a pattern of incompetence and replace her with someone whose personal concerns we never hear about."

I dunno. I have not had a great career (on this topic, my current boss actually told me I talk too much about my household so I don't mention them in front of him anymore) The best boss I've had was the one who fired me (I did deserve it). But I've found that telling bosses personal information is both giving them ammunition against one and giving them reason to think of one as not Solely Committed To The Job.

One's boss may be a kind humane person. Or they could be cruel in various ways. The problem is it's difficult to find out without risking one's employment. I'd err on the side of caution.

[shirou]

I’ve been lucky to have had very humane supervisors with whom I could freely discuss personal issues. LW’s boss has asked about LW’s sibling, so it doesn’t sound like the boss finds personal discussions off-putting or unprofessional. The friend’s advice seems well-intentioned, and the power differential does indicate a cautious approach, but nothing in this letter jumps out as a red flag.

[lassarina]

I've been lucky that for the past thirteen years I've primarily had excellent bosses who are invested in my well-being as a person not just a cog in the machine; I think talking about it once a month is probably fine (assuming that it's not turning into, like, sobbing meltdown on boss's actual shoulder, which it doesn't sound like it is.)

It depends, of course, on the workplace, but where I work and in my department, generally, we keep an eye out for each other's situations so that we can step up when something goes wrong. For example when boss was having family stress due to her mother-in-law's illness, our team figured out how to take some of her work off her plate, and when my grandmother was in the hospital, boss just quietly reassigned a bunch of my work and told me if I needed a day (or more) to take it. I had a coworker out last week because his mother passed away and we all just accepted that it was going to send the project slightly off-kilter and we'd catch up later, because one builds slack into the schedule for precisely this sort of thing.

Probably my team is a really weird outlier, though, I guess?

[ambyr]

No, I don’t think you’re weird! What you describe has been totally normal behavior on every team I’ve ever worked for. Bad teams do exist but I don’t think they’re as widespread as LW’s friend thinks.

[lassarina]

Even in my worst workplace (the call center for the first 3.5 years out of college), I would say that while the attitude did not invite friendly sharing, it was still ok to say "hey I got Stuff going on," I guess? I know that two years ago when I kicked over a family beehive by reporting my grandmother's caretaker to DCFS, the second thing I did (after confirming to my mother that I had done the thing) was call my boss and be like "so I just did this thing and wanted to give you a heads up in case that person decides to start shit" and he was like "well....that's a terrible situation, let me know what you need."

My job's not perfect but at least they are pretty aggressive about "you have a life outside work and we expect that."