I’ve heard of cases where not sharing vulnerability in such a setting led to others (who did) being offended and subsequent othering. While arguing the manager needs to be fired is a bit too far, you do need to consider the power differential and how it forces conformance from everyone.

Yes, if someone shares they were abused as a child, it becomes much more fraught to tell everyone you messed up two poached eggs while making brunch last weekend and you are not quite the chef you hope to be.

That’s why you have to volunteer to go first, because then you have plausible deniability about the expected level of vulnerability.

I have personal experience with a manager who acted similarly intrusively, seeming to want to blur lines between professional and personal. They later critiqued my (supposed) emotional state and motivations in a professional review. "Force" may not be accurate as in strapping me into the group until I talk, "abuse" may not be accurate as in an active misuse of power -- but there are negative consequences for non-participation.

I'm not the least bit opposed to connecting with peers. I've extracted two cherished friends of 10+ years from prior jobs. I just require it to occur organically and with peers, separate from groups led by the person signing my paychecks and writing my annual reviews.

Unpopular opinion, but this is the problem with work from home.

Reduces people to output. And if that output can be done cheaper by someone in another country or automated away, why even hesitate to change out the things that generate the output anymore than a lightbulb?

As much as I am a huge WFH proponent, I do agree that forming social bonds with coworkers is harder in that environment. An unsurprising consequence of that is managers having less personal attachment to individual employees.

On the other hand, I do know of a few companies that manage to team members socially engaged, mostly in ways that don't feel like forced "mandatory fun time". It's not easy, and it's a cultural value that needs to permeate everything. But it can be done.

It can certainly be done, but requires a lot more proactive effort on behalf of the company than in office because of the lack of casual encounters.

And I wonder if companies are motivated to invest in that and/or if once you’ve made that investment if wfh really saves money relative to hybrid work.

As the number of wfh jobs gets closer and closer to pre-2020, but the share of workers who want it doesn’t decrease equally, it’s much easier for companies to use it to exploit people (“want a wfh job? Then accept all these other things.”)

There's a power differential when management suggests you do something. Even if they genuinely, 100% for real would not care if you didn't share, the power balance is still at play there, which makes it dicey regardless of anything else. I actually like my manager, he's a chill guy and I've had some deep talks with him a few times (after work hours!), but if he pulled a stunt like this during work hours I'd 100% tell him that it's a completely inappropriate thing to do.

I know that he doesn't mean ill or harm by it, but how is the new hire who's anxious to be starting the job supposed to react to it? How can you expect them to say no without feeling like "not being a team player" or whatever other stupid cliche HR types like to use?

> But if on most days we're spending most of our time with these people, what do we gain from automatically disqualifying them from human connection just because they work at the same place as us?

Some people just don't care to make people from work anything more than an acquaintance. They have their own social lives which they invest infinitely more energy into than their work lives, and that's completely fine. I personally can't remember the last time I've spoken to any of my ex-colleagues after they or I left the job, I definitely wouldn't call any of them friends. I still hung out with them at the bar on Friday evenings after a tough sprint, we had a good working relationship, we just weren't friends. I have actual friends who I'd rather spend the time with for that.

> Some people just don't care to make people from work anything more than an acquaintance.

I've also been in a situation where I tried but realized behind the work persona they were assholes I would never be friends with.

I've considered quiting at that point but decided to just not socialize with them. Work interactions are fine.

It's a bit sad because in previous job I got along really well with most coworkers but such is life. I have enough friends and if it ever becomes a problem at work I'll just leave.

The goal with any of these icebreakers is to encourage the team to be humble and approach work related problems in a thoughtful manner.

It's easy for someone to assume you are asked to open up about non-work related stories, but it's never the intention. For example, talking about how your Aunt passing away being the reason you got into software engineering, is not really going to help the team in any meaningful way.

However, it is quite valuable to share a story about how a coworker left you a huge unfinished project before abruptly going on vacation, and how you struggled to pick up the slack. You can use that story about the pain and frustration you felt and how you learned the value of having your work in a proper hand-off state when you eventually plan to take extended time away.

Don't ever feel like you need to talk about your hobbies, or family, or even your love of cats or dogs. In time you will build your work friends and connect with people who share some your interests, but it will never be forced, and a few of them may become lifelong friends.

That's fair, but that's not how the author presented this request from their manager. Judging from the stories shared, people seemed to believe that they were being asked to share stories from their personal lives.

It doesn't really matter what the manager intended; if they were primarily looking for vulnerable professional moments, they should have said so. And if they were indeed looking for personal stories, that's inappropriate.

Oh, I realize there's a misunderstanding somewhere, and likely the manager's fault more than anything.

I imagine at some leadership training, they were probably encouraged to get their direct reports to open up and misunderstood the scope of that.

It is abuse and the manager forced everyone to respond either by participating or by refusing to participate or by lying or by exposing that they actually have literally nothing interesting to say.

If you don't get that, then you are probably out their making life 5% hell for half the people around you, in blissful ignorance thanks to the effort they all put in to catering to your inconsiderate interactions.

> making life 5% hell

Not even sure what this means

checks out

Being vulnerable can be great and helpful when forming personal relationships. A manager asking their direct reports to be (personally) vulnerable in a professional setting, in front of a group, is inappropriate.

While I agree that it wasn't forced (and I know that I would personally have no problem sticking to whatever level of sharing I was comfortable with), I bet you that at least one person on that team felt uncomfortable with it, but also felt like they could be penalized in some way (even just socially) if they didn't share. That's not ok.

If you can't forge bonds with your teammates without your boss asking people to share vulnerable moments during a team meeting, there are deeper problems that this sort of exercise is not going to address.

From my most recent job, I have quite a few strong friendships that we've maintained over the years, even though we've all left that company years ago. But most (if not all) of my so-called friendships with coworkers at other jobs faded quickly after one of us left the company. That's pretty normal, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with having a vibrant social life outside of your colleagues, and not really being interested in those colleagues beyond acquaintance level.

How is being "10% more vulnerable" required for human connection?

The thing is that in this scenario there is no control over the conversation so some participants may feel uncomfortable. My 10% can vary greatly from someone else's. The writer admitted so themselves "I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple years prior and a taste of how painful it was"

Imagine your manager asking you to share something at 10%, you share something modest like "sometimes I really feel anxiety over my work / deadlines / performance" and then the next person shares a deeply personal, super serious story about their almost collapsed marriage. They either set the tone for the whole conversation, forcing everybody else to follow along, or they hijack the conversation since what they shared is more serious.

There is no way to know before hand what someone is going to share, so there is no way to know before hand that everyone is going to feel comfortable.

"Human connection" could be discussing your hobbies with your coworkers, doesn't have to be a round table where everyone is sharing difficult experiences.