It’s Time to Rethink “Professionalism”
More than a year after the line between work and home blurred, instead of expecting our colleagues to be “professional,” maybe we can allow them to be “human”
A few weeks ago in one of the many professionally-oriented Facebook groups I’ve joined or been added to over the years, a senior manager at a nonprofit organization posted a question that I’ll paraphrase here to avoid running afoul of the group’s privacy policy:
How do I tell my team to be professional on our calls and keep their pets off Zoom?
Within half an hour, the post had received more than two hundred comments, most of which can be summed up as: “You don’t.”
As anyone who has ever had a pet knows, the moment you vanquish them from a room is the exact moment they absolutely must be in that very room. If you think having your employee’s cat walk across their desk is distracting, wait until that same cat chooses to express his displeasure at being banned from the office by loudly singing the song of his people just outside the door as your employee is presenting your quarterly P&L report. If you’re worried your employee’s dreaming dog, visible in the frame, is distracting the rest of your team, imagine how much much more distracted…
