When Professional and Personal Lines are blurred

We must understand that “family” means different things to different people. Not everyone wants to connect with their coworkers on a deeper level, let alone create a dependency to the organization. In a professional context, an employee will want to reserve private details of their personal lives outside of work. But when your workplace is a “family,” these types of conversations can be fair game, as the goal of the organization is to encourage socialization for the benefit of the whole. This leads employees to emotionally attach themselves to the organization. While it can reduce conflicts and disagreements within the organization, a fear of causing a strain in the relationship with their superiors (who are now seen as fathers or mothers) could leave employees feeling like they must share any information that is being asked of them.

Joshua A. Luna, writing in the Harvard Business Review