Maintaining a professional relationship with your boss is crucial for career growth and workplace harmony. While open communication is essential, there are certain things you should avoid sharing with your boss to maintain professionalism and respect. Here are ten things you should never tell your boss:
1. Personal Opinions on Colleagues: Sharing negative opinions about coworkers can create tension and undermine teamwork. It’s best to address any concerns directly with the colleague or HR.
2. Intimate Details of Your Personal Life: While it’s fine to share general aspects of your personal life, avoid divulging intimate details or problems that could affect your work performance.
Your political affiliation should remain private information. For a myriad of reasons. First of all, you risk offending coworkers and your boss while creating an uncomfortable work environment. But more important, once a boss knows about your affiliation, you could be judged as too open or closed-minded for a particular job. Even if your boss treats you equally, political prejudices still exist and could easily work against you.
3. Spouse’s Income
You might be wondering why this is on the list, but trust us — your boss shouldn’t know about your spouse’s income.
If your spouse is CEO of a successful company and a coworker vying for a job has an unemployed spouse your boss is aware of, you could lose out on a promotion even though you’re equally qualified because it may seem as though you don’t “need” the promotion. Even if your boss isn’t conscious of that information playing a part in his/her decision, you don’t want to take any chances where your career is concerned.
4. You’re Working Another Job
Many people work second jobs, including freelance positions. But your other business should stay your business.
Companies often develop and expand non-competition agreements and policies instructing employees to retain only one job. As your company could implement such a policy at any time, you should avoid telling your boss about other work obligations so you can continue to fly under the radar and make ends meet.
Not to mention, if you have an annual review with your boss and he/she cites a decrease in your performance, your boss could easily point the finger at the time and energy you’re spending working at the second job. Don’t give anyone any excuses to question your work ethic.
5. Sexual Orientation
Unless your sexual orientation is directly related to your job, there’s no reason to disclose your sexual orientation to your boss.
Don’t mistake this as advice to not be yourself or be ashamed of who you are. Far from it. But the harsh truth is that although discrimination is illegal, it still occurs. And in certain industries, stereotypes still work against individuals based on sexual orientation. Who you date or decide to marry is your business, and it would be a shame if a prejudiced boss used that personal information against you when considering a raise or promotion.
6. Your Living Situation
No one at work needs to know about your living situation, whether you’re at home with your parents or struggling to make your mortgage payment.
This is another aspect of your life that could cause others to judge you or create or a problem for you where your boss is concerned. It can also reveal other details of your life, opening the possibility of sexual orientation discrimination and ageism.
7. Night Life
Whether you’re reading bedtime stories to your kids or hitting the bars every night, your boss shouldn’t know anything about your night life unless it includes taking classes in your field or doing extra work from home or your favorite cafe.
If you can’t complete an after-hours work task due to a hot date or helping kids with homework, it’s best to simply indicate that you have other obligations at home. Keep the personal drama at home.
8. Religious Beliefs
It’s against the law to discriminate against religious beliefs, but talking about religion too often at work is inappropriate (unless you work for a religious organization).
If your job duties entail something that violates a religious belief, you should speak up. You do not necessarily need to be specific with your boss; you can simply indicate that the task at hand violates one of your beliefs. If possible, present an alternative or workaround.
We’re all entitled to our personal religious beliefs, but remember not everyone is religious and a workplace is not a church. It’s all about common sense. A Bible quote on your cubicle is no big deal, but proselytizing and trying to convert your coworkers is going to ruffle a few feathers and could potentially put your job security on shaky ground.
9. Political Affiliation
The quickest way to alienate people in a mixed crowd is to talk about politics.