Encourage Extracurriculars

If you’re bored then you’re boring.

Hot take (not really): interesting people do interesting things. We want teams of interesting people. If we have a diverse, high-performance team doing great work, we probably have a team of interesting people. So let’s let them do interesting things!

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As managers and leaders, it’s mostly none of our damn business what anyone does outside the workplace. But decisions we make, policies we implement/enforce, and the culture we cultivate can have enormous impact on the lives of our team members, even beyond the office.

I’ve long thought it important to encourage my teams in their pursuits of activities outside of work, whatever they may be — even at the potential expense of some specific work productivity.¹ And always with a keen interest in not sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.

It doesn’t take long to realize it’s almost always an overall net positive.

So here’s how I’ve tried to this, while simultaneously staying the hell out of people’s personal business:

• Make it publicly clear that I am interested in supporting people as rounded individuals, not just pawns in a business plan. And make it clear that while I love hearing about people’s passions, I also deeply respect everyone’s privacy.

• Affirmatively allow for flexibility in assignments and scheduling as feasible. When people ask for flexibility, try to give it to them. Can’t always be done, but worth the effort.

• Provide dogged support for dealing with any bureaucratic barriers that may arise. Sometimes corporate policy can have an unreasonable chilling effect on team members’ pursuits. If they ask for help, I try to give it to them.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a “no questions asked” approach, I’ve always tried to pry as little as I can. And in return, people often open up on their own. That kind of vulnerability itself can be very important in a creative workplace, too.

Workism

“Leading by example” may be a trap, and team culture certainly cannot be created by executive fiat, but a team’s leadership does have the opportunity to model behavior and live the values of the team.

And so I’ve tried to embody this ethos for myself, too. Nonetheless I’ll admit that at points I’ve been what Simone Stolzoff calls in The Good Enough Job a “workist,” and to my own detriment.

Stolzoff describes workism as the phenomenon whereby work evolves (devolves?) from a transaction of labor for money to a source of “identity and spiritual fulfillment.”

Obviously, I’ve written about this concept a lot — it’s one of the most interesting and inscrutable aspects of being a creative professional, not to mention managing creative professionals. Being able to make a living doing what we love is the ultimate professional privilege. And simultaneously, loving work is for suckers.

So extracurriculars are, I would argue, especially important for folks who really love their work. Having sources of “identity and spiritual fulfillment” outside of work relieves the burden of having to find them inside, which can lead to a healthier perspective on what work can — and should — provide.

And here’s the kicker. As Stolzoff points out:

“research shows that people who have hobbies, interests, and passions outside of work tend to be more productive workers.” (Emphasis mine.)

A more productive team that also has a healthier relationship with their job? Give me all of that, please.

Still, as with most things, it’s easier said than done.

Conflict of Interest

Given the nature of the work that I do and the teams that I’ve led, extracurriculars for my folks have often consisted of things like playing in a band, designing sound for an indie film, or mixing a friend’s album. People who do audio for a living often still do audio, even when they’re not “working.”

But I’ve also had team members who play serious team sports or who are competitive snowboarders, mountain bikers, or runners. Others teach classes, write articles, speak at conventions, sculpt, paint, or volunteer with organizations that are important to them.

Different people find all sorts of different activities fulfilling, nourishing, restorative. And that diversity is itself positive.

Now, many companies have very specific and explicit rules about what constitutes “conflict of interest” for outside activities, as well as carefully prescribed processes for gaining approval (or not) under these rules.

I take management very seriously and understand that we in managerial roles are under certain expectations and obligations to enforce the policies of the larger organization.

And…I don’t mean to diminish that at all when I say that I also believe that blind adherence to dumb rules is poor leadership (even if it might technically be good management), and that I expect to be granted — and indeed believe the organization is obliged to grant me — a reasonable amount of discretion in implementing those policies.

All of which is to say, and at the risk of incriminating myself here, it’s possible I’ve looked the other way sometimes. It’s possible, hypothetically, that I was aware of potential conflicts and…kind of didn’t care?

I’m not an idiot, nor am I some kind of rogue agent. I wouldn’t approve of someone doing side work for a competitor, or using company resources or equipment, or representing the company in a manner contrary to its public positions. Of course not!

But sometimes there are fine lines that require domain expertise to see and understand. Lines that are invisible — or, I suppose, irrelevant — to the bureaucrats in HR and Legal who would broad-stroke disallow some behavior that, really, was quite benign.

And no shade (well…maybe some shade) to HR and Legal — it’s their job to protect the company. They have every incentive to say “no” to something that might seem in conflict, and almost no incentive to deep-dive and understand any subtlety or nuance. Fair enough. But weak.

Also, kind of an aside, but worth pointing out: some of these policies are born of a fear of losing a valuable employee to their side-pursuit. Why should we pay someone to pursue an interest that will eventually allow them to walk away from their job, the thinking goes.

Absurd. I can confidently say that in thirty years I have never lost a team member to a career as a rock star when their Thursday-night bar band took off, or to a Pulitzer-winning journalism career because they wrote a couple of articles for Niche Weekly. Nope.

But what I have found, time and again, is team members with new or more refined skills, and fresh, re-energized perspectives.

Conflict of Values

So, sure, I can be a “cool boss” and help subvert the bureaucracy when I feel like it’s overly burdensome (probably shouldn’t, and not saying I have…also not not saying that…sigh). But do my own judgements come into play? How do my own biases, beliefs, values, principles, and taboos figure into this?

What if someone’s extracurricular is to do sound for a neo-Nazi rally? More realistically, what if it’s to play in a soccer league notorious for discrimination?

Or what about the converse: is it okay to ask for flexibility at work in order to volunteer for a voting-rights organization, or a food bank…or, if we want to swim into really spicy sauce, a church? Where is the line?

Why are all these paragraphs just lists of questions?

Well, obviously, because I don’t have answers. And in fact, I don’t think there are general-purpose answers. I bring it up simply because I’ve personally been faced with such questions, and I’ve sometimes struggled.

But wait! If I don’t stick my nose in people’s business, how do I even know what they are doing? Well, sometimes they just talk about it. Like I said, that kind of openness and vulnerability can be a really positive cultural value.

But more insidiously, it’s because they’ve talked to other team members (as they will do), and those folks take issue. I’ve had the conversation with Team Member A who says, “Are you aware of what Team Member B is doing when they leave early on Wednesdays? I’m very uncomfortable with it.” Oof.

To be clear, no one has ever asked me to accommodate their participation in a neo-Nazi rally. But I have been asked about — or gotten wind of — activities that struck me as somewhat inharmonious with the team’s ethos.

Again, though, not anything that would constitute a “conflict of interest” in a legal sense. No, that would make it easy! Use the policy like a crutch, say no, and move on — philosophical crisis averted.

But to my recollection, I’ve always erred toward being more rather than less accommodating. Inter-team discomfort needs to be addressed, of course, but in a way that maintains privacy. And anyway, I’m skeptical of my own biases. So I’ve tried to be as equitably accommodating as I can.

Equity ≠ Equality

But remember, as we well know, “equitable” and “equal” are not the same. In fact, they’re often incompatible.

It would hardly be fair to people who don’t have a passionate hobby, or who, for whatever reason, are not currently engaged in anything in particular outside of work to bear the brunt of this policy.

That is to say, all that generous flexibility being gifted to the person who likes to mountain bike shouldn’t be paid for as a burden on the person who mostly just likes to read books and watch TV…and who therefore will put in a few extra hours to cover. Right? That would be unequal and inequitable.

And yeah…that certainly is a danger.

Take that line of thinking further: Is being a parent “extracurricular”? What about being a caregiver? Or even being a person with special physical or cognitive needs? Does granting accommodation for someone dealing with family matters require some correction elsewhere on the balance sheet?

As with pretty much everything, pursuing this policy requires thoughtfulness and intentionality.

The reality is that the whole team benefits from a generous spirit of flexibility and accommodation. At any one moment, any snapshot in time, it might tilt unequally one way or the other. But we know that flexibility increases productivity over time, so we can absorb some momentary inequality as we affirmatively drive to equity.

I just haven’t seen it be a real problem. And more than that, what I have seen is happier, healthier, more rounded, more committed team members.

1. I mean, within reason… I’m mostly talking about people asking to come in early and leave early one day a week, say, or to be gone for an important event — for which they will use their own PTO — that might conflict with an important deadline.