By Duncan Coombe
IT’S a sentiment we have all heard many times on the job: “Don’t take it personally” or “Hey, it’s not personal, it’s just business.”
We’ve heard it said regarding feedback, conflict, difficult conversations, restructuring, lost deals, collaboration, dealing with career ups and downs—all kinds of daily workplace issues.
And yet it’s an absurd idea.
Work is the place where I spend most of my waking hours and I’m not supposed to take it personally? I understand that by “not taking it personally,” we protect ourselves in work contexts that can seem challenging and threatening. But “taking it personally” has its benefits.
The first of these relates to success and well-being. Take a moment to think about the people you’ve encountered whom you consider inspired, energized and successful. They probably take work personally. Consider the connection between engaged employees and business performance. What is engagement if not “taking it personally”? And when we consider the low levels of reported workplace engagement among employees, it becomes clear that “not taking it personally” can have real costs.
Then there’s ethics. “Not taking it personally” lies at the heart of many corporate ethics scandals, from embezzling and accounting fraud to issues of worker safety and environmental protection. It’s when executives and teams adopt the mindless notion of “it’s not personal, it’s business” that they absolve themselves of their responsibilities as social actors.
For these reasons and more, it’s clear to me that if we are to fulfill our responsibilities and obligations as executives—and our potential as leaders—we need to take things very personally.
Duncan Coombe is an adjunct professor of organizational behavior and leadership at IMD Business School.