> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward.

I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.

Please don't bring your whole self to work, the rest of us don't need that from you. Be polite, congenial and professional. You have the rest of your day to let it rip however you'd like.

It's more likely incompetence than malice. There's a reason people don't share everything about their personal lives at work, and sometimes leaders think forgetting that will make everyone better off.

Probably so, but it was incredibly ill advised of Netflix to admit to this. That’s what I find the most shocking, far more than the firing itself. I cannot fathom how admitting “yeah we fired them for going to therapy” plays to their benefit.

There's a huge difference between being yourself and not having a filter.

I absolutely think people should be themselves at work. In my mind this generally means not acting like a robot or treating other people like toasters. It is psychologically crushing to operate in a they're all workplace where people do that. The best managers I've ever had were those I could discuss my emotions or that of my team with.

That said, there are clear lines about workplace decorum.

It's one thing to say " I find this new Direction very frustrating for reasons x y and z, and the team morale is low", but another thing to say "i think the new leader is a dipshit idiot"

For some reason people think being yourself means having no filter

absolutely. I learned by example early on from our manager what one should say during something like a "vulnerability-trust exercise." : it should be something like "i'm too detail oriented", "i put too much time and effort into my job" or, max, "i trust/expect people to be similarly overly-diligent, etc.".

For an exec to talk about therapy - that is allowed only to the top dogs, like CEO, who can pass any personal crap upon his reports.

"Bring your whole self to work" was HR virtue signaling to the people favored by DEI, when it was still en vogue.