Within the workplace, there is a familiar and oft-repeated Filipino expression: Walang personalan, trabaho lang (nothing personal, it’s just the job). It has been used to emphasize that workplace — business and management — decisions are all objective and intended for the betterment of the enterprise and that there was no intention to hurt the people who fall as collateral damage. Its sister saying would be, Huwag dalhin sa opisina ang problema sa bahay (Don’t bring household problems to work). On the other hand, this suggests that one should not let personal and home issues affect the quality of one’s work and deliverables. These statements are deeply entrenched in workplace cultures; one can almost not help but accept them as management wisdom. But is it?
Last month, I had the privilege of facilitating an important corporate communication: cascading and translating a large distribution company’s recently revisited vision, mission, and core values (VMV). This was one of the initial steps in a strategic business planning process the organization was embarking on, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the workshops, the CEO described the kind of business and organization he hopes to create within the next three to seven years. He extended the invitation to the different layers of management, offering the opportunity and seeking their commitment to helping him make the future a reality.
The entire premise of the session was inspired in some part by the Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model. We argued that in as much as members have their sense of purpose, meaning, and direction, each of them will only be able to commit to a team or organization — and achieve and sustain a superior level of performance — if and only if they find that doing so fulfills their own personal aspirations.
This was an important cornerstone of the entire workshop. One cannot argue that employees must divest themselves of personal concerns and issues before coming to work when for all practical purposes, most of their waking hours are spent because of work. On a regular day, waking up early directly results from the need to come to work. They endure an hour or two of traffic to get to work, spend eight to 10 hours in the office, warehouse, or plant, and endure another hour or two to get home. Some are even expected to be on call at night and on weekends.
No one goes to work and leaves a “personal” version of themselves by their threshold. We all bring to the workplace our complete selves: our talents, motivations, passions, problems, subconscious issues, competencies, attitudes, feelings, values, and faith. Overworked and exposed to risk, one does not wear down or kill an “employee.” One wears down and kills a person.
Work is personal, and is perhaps a very deeply personal dimension of our human existence: it is an expression of everything we are good and poor at, of our genius and our folly, and we get compensated for it to sustain our human existence — not only materially, but in its entirety.
The implication of our collective reflection during those sessions was clear: leadership matters. It matters because it is that function of management that seeks to influence, inspire, empower, and engage. For all that to happen, it behooves the leader to seek to know, understand, and align their team members’ aspirations with the organization’s. The leader can no longer be completely utilitarian — to pay to be served. You do that, and you find your team members working only for money and willing to be sold out to the next highest bidder, especially — and it often is — when the work and the workplace are no longer a happy and growth place.
So, yes, work is personal, and working for you — whoever you are — is a personal choice with personal implications.
As a postscript, I found this true for them when I shared these thoughts with some young — millennial, if you will — friends. If all that matters is financial performance, they will give you the money if you show them the money. But if what matters is a greater purpose, and the work has their name on it, they will give you more.
Denver Bingski Daradar is an assistant professorial lecturer and doctoral candidate at the Ramon V. Del Rosario College of Business of De La Salle University.
