The break down of work silos and the technology revolution have forced workers and managers to realize that expertise in emotional intelligence is an absolute requirement for career and work success. David Goleman led the way in helping us understand that emotional smarts, the subtext of conversations, is something you can't do without.
Self-disclosure is one of the more important pieces of emotional smarts, a conversational skill and a tool that's often misunderstood. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about making highly personal confessions about your past life. Self-disclosure is revealing how you're reacting to the present work demands, and giving relevant info from the past. These are often things that would never have been discussed. In business it makes for better organizational insight and decisions, and often positively impacts personal growth and one's career options. Self-disclosure is both ordinary and unique. It's one of the tools that initially evokes a "Ho-hum" or "of course." But then when I explain further, it's "Wow, I never thought about that."
Here's a "ho-hum" example. Let's suppose you're building a new team to handle a major project. Since scope management could be a major problem, and none on the team has the experience to manage project scope, you immediately think of a past experience. "One person we should add is Jane Moran. I've worked with her on two past projects and found her insights very helpful. She'd be a valued addition for helping us manage the scope of this project. When I worked with her, I found that she . . . blah, blah, blah." Note that the comments about Jane were focused on present needs, but also disclosed info about the past.
Self-disclosure's value goes far beyond the ho-hum. In fact, it's a tool that's highly useful for leveraging your career success.
Why are self-disclosure skills so important?
1. Self-disclosure is the basis of close personal relationships. In fact, self-disclosure is key to enhancing your working relationships. Self-disclosing is a way of identifying with others, creating value for yourself and surfacing the values of others. It automatically pulls out comparable experiences from others. "You had that experience? I had a similar experience. Blah, blah, blah. . . ." And so effective self-disclosers get a lot of attention for who they are, what they know, who they know and what they can do. All kinds of studies show that when you're valued by others, your opportunities for exposure, challenging experiences and promotion will be multiplied.
2. Self-disclosure is essential to feedback and growth. People who reveal their attitudes, assumptions, thinking and objectives, as well as actions, are far more likely to receive feedback and input from others. The research is clear: without direct or indirect feedback, growth is an utter impossibility. To resist self-disclosing is to sicken a relationship and limit the synergies. Indeed, the energy poured into hiding adds to the stress of relationship and dulls your own awareness of your inner and outer experiences. Being silent is not being strong. Strength is the willingness to take risks in an organizational relationship, to disclose with intention of building a better self, a better relationship and a better organization.
3. Self-disclosure is inevitably reciprocal. The more self-disclosing you are to another person, the more likely that person will self-disclose to you. Extensive, even systematic research in this field reveals that a person willing to be self-disclosing will likely be a competent, open and socially extroverted person who feels a strong need to interact with others. He is likely to be flexible, adaptive and, surprisingly, more intelligent than his less self-revealing peers. Furthermore, self-disclosers (because of the input and feedback they inevitably receive) are more objectively aware of the realities of organizational life and relationships. Not surprisingly, the self-discloser tends to view his fellow persons as more good than evil, an optimistic perspective that is often self-fulfilling, resulting in more overall life success than might be normally expected.
4. Self-disclosure is strongly related to interpersonal effectiveness, especially for the development of self-regulation. If, for example, I self-disclose to a colleague, and she gives me the feedback that I can be perceived as so demanding that others shut down (a not unusual response to the highly ambitious), that sets me on the path to monitoring my "demandingness" in order to keep the channels open for relationships, information flow and business input. Interpersonal effectiveness can be defined as the degree to which the consequences of your behavior match your intentions. Viewed this way, self-disclosure is a highly important interpersonal building block.
Photo: Courtesy Ben Heine, "Mute" Flickr