Electronics are breaching the rigid walls between business and personal life built by corporations and amplified by commuting. Depending on how we leverage the power of modern communications, the "wired world" can either create more stress or be leveraged to reduce stress.
During evenings and on weekends, some of us are tempted to log in to speed work progress and leverage global time differences. When communicating with someone on the other side of the world, a few after-hours e-mails can cut a day out of a message loop.
In this fast-paced 21st century, so many subjects are taboo in the office that you can hardly say anything personal without treading on shaky legal ground. Beyond general questions like, "Is anything bothering you?" or "How are things going?" co-workers and bosses are potentially taking a risky step in asking about personal issues. If personal subjects are to be discussed, it is up to the individual to raise them.
We are afraid that if we share information, it will be used against us. However, if we don't share our priorities, co-workers will make assumptions and those assumptions may be incorrect. Faced with similar sets of circumstances, people have different priorities. For example, some people prefer rotations to uprooting their family. In contrast, for others, daily contact is more highly valued. Providing information on our priorities even if it reveals limitations may be better protection than silence.
After years of juggling child-care issues, my husband and I were enjoying the freedom of an empty nest. I was thrilled with my flexibility to take advantage of business and recreational opportunities. However, nature abhors a vacuum. Thousands of miles away, my widowed mother tumbled down her stairs and was diagnosed with dementia. I decided to move her close to me and take responsibility for her care. Even though she is in a full-time-care, assisted-living facility, I found we were lurching from one crisis to the next. I cringed when the phone rang in the evening, anticipating a new problem with her.
My initial reaction was to keep quiet about my stressful problem. However, when I opened up to co-workers, I discovered many people were trying to care for elderly relatives. I benefited from emotional support as well as flexibility to deal with the crises. Emotional support doesn't have to mean a lot of wasted office time. Short conversations and small gestures of support were important in reducing my stress. In searching for the appropriate support services, I also benefited from the company-sponsored advisory service, Lifeworks, which along with general advice can provide customized information on local services and facilities. Sharing information on my problem not only reduced my stress because of moral support, but led to real assistance in the form of flexibility.
If you keep quiet, others may just see an inexplicable degradation in work performance. Opening up enough to let colleagues know the challenges you are facing allows you to get emotional support and credit for carrying on in the face of adversity. Time in the office is a precious commodity, but emotional support need not take much time or disrupt business.
As we seek flexibility to deal with personal matters, the modern communications tools that allow work to come home with us can be turned to advantage. If you must take time off during the day to handle personal matters, you can catch up in the evening. If you are obliged to stay home to care for someone, depending on the nature of your job, you may be able to work almost as effectively from home as from the office. The result is a win-win situation. The company may even respect you more for being able to smoothly handle adversity.

Eve Sprunt, evesprunt@aol.com, is the venture executive in the Venture Capital Group of ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures.

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