Voices
like to build bridges between your
professional and personal lives.
Integrators strive to blend their
jobs with their lives outside work
— they’re eager to talk about their
kids at work, don’t mind bringing their work home, and happy to
share the same information with
colleagues as family and friends.
If you’re a segmentor, you like
to keep your professional and
personal lives separate. Segmentors create mental fences between
their jobs and other aspects of
their lives. On social media, this
might mean using privacy controls, making your profile unsearchable, or segmenting your
network by using LinkedIn for
professional contacts and Facebook for personal contacts.
The other factor is how we
want to be seen by others: Are
we aiming to impress or express?
Impressers see social media as a
vehicle for looking good — they
want to build a positive reputation and attract a strong base
of followers. As the researchers
write, impressers aim to “disclose information that is flattering (e.g. achievements, good
picture), glamorous (e.g. travel
observations and pictures) or
makes one look smart (e.g. inter-
ADAM
GRANT
HUFFINGTON
09.22.13
esting news articles).” They also
avoid controversial posts and
carefully control and monitor
photos, tags and comments.
For expressers, social media
isn’t about winning others over;
it’s an opportunity to be seen accurately by others. This means being more open online: sharing vulnerabilities, disclosing unpopular
opinions, writing about stressful
experiences, or posting photos
that might not appeal to everyone.
Impressers aim to ‘disclose
information that is flattering
(e.g. achievements, good
picture), glamorous (e.g. travel
observations and pictures)
or makes one look smart (e.g.
interesting news articles).’”
When we combine boundary preferences and image motives, we can gain insight into
the strategies that we select and
how much other people will like
and respect us. Integrators with
a strong motivation to express
don’t filter their content or their
audiences. This open strategy is
the least time-consuming and the
most authentic, but it sacrifices