That time I realized I was faking it with my crew every morning

For like 2 years straight, I'd roll up to the job site in Houston with this big fake smile and 'morning guys!' even when I was totally dragging. My foreman finally pulled me aside after a bad week and said 'Ray, we can tell you're faking it, just say you're tired, we get it.' That hit me because I thought I was being a good leader by acting happy, but really I was just making everyone feel like they had to pretend too. Has anyone else had a moment where your act was actually making things worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

daniel1402d ago

My cousin tried the same thing at his warehouse gig for like 8 months before we finally told him to cut it out. He'd come in with this super loud "good morning everybody!" while looking like he hadn't slept in a week. One day I just said "dude you sound like a dying cat trying to be cheerful" and he busted out laughing because he knew it was true. We made a deal that any day he's feeling rough he just gives a thumbs up from across the room and nobody pressures him to talk. Honestly the fake cheerfulness was making everyone else feel like they had to match his energy when none of us had it.

evan_green522d ago

It's crazy how much pressure we put on ourselves to perform a certain mood, and then everyone around us feels that pressure too. @daniel140 that thumbs up system your cousin worked out is actually genius because it takes the guesswork out of reading someone's body language. I've noticed at my own job that when one person forces a super positive vibe on a rough day, it backfires and makes the whole room feel tense, like we're all failing at being happy. It's like there's this unspoken rule that you have to be "on" for everyone else, but really a little honesty about having a bad morning goes a lot further than a fake smile that fools nobody.

milam482d ago

This whole thing is just a small piece of the bigger problem where everyone feels like they have to perform all the time, not just at work but at the grocery store and family dinners too. The second one person drops the act, it gives everyone else permission to be real, which makes the whole group feel less like they're failing at being human. Pretending to be fine when you're not just turns basic social interaction into this exhausting game nobody actually wants to play.