I have been observing the subtle art of the professional anecdote.

As someone pointed out to me recently, LinkedIn and other similar networks, along with individual websites like this very site, a professional-ish blog, are rife with people wearing masks.

Professional masks, of course. People post on sites and blogs like LinkedIn and their own portfolio websites and almost unanimously do so wearing a kind of digital mask. That is to say, much of what you read here, there and other similar places is almost certainly, to a degree, appropriately, necessarily, and interestingly performative.

Not in a bad way. Rather, it is performative in a work way.

We are all trying to be professionals, and build up a facet of our identities online that normally we would reserve for the office.

And this leads to the fine art of the professional anecdote. How does one tell a work appropriate story that is simultaneously a little humorous, a little insightful, and all around something that might be the kind of story one would feel perfectly comfortable telling at a meeting or a conference or to a client? 

A few minute before I sat down to write this a former colleague of mine, can I call him a colleague? Someone with whom I did business in the past to whom I am now connected on LinkedIn, wrote a little story about how on the way to catch a cross-country flight to attend a business meeting recently he encountered a faulty gas pump while refueling his rental car, soaked his only pair of shoes in gasoline, and consequently had to think on his feet (groan) while navigating airport security, a crowded flight, and an important business meeting. A little humourous. Insightfully relatable. And assuming it was told with a tact, perfectly the kind of story that one could tell at the start of a meeting with just about anyone. Professionally anecdotal.

And it is an art form that while often derided a bit pejoratively, just as I did to a degree when I noted that this is a kind of performative mask wearing, it is also a part of professional decorum that is vital to anyone in business these days.

I note this second take because on LinkedIn lately I have seen some people, clearly the kinds of folks who have crafted long and careful perceptions online to their colleagues, suddenly shift into deep and divisive political opinion, telling stories that tick all the boxes as above, but then also make people a little uncomfortable regarding the state of the world these days, from almost every perspective one might imagine.

So I wonder: is this a blip, and will the fine art of professional performance online shift back to the apolitical “a funny thing happened to me on the way to work” anecdotes? Or are we entering a refreshened era of tinting those masks to match our political colours to better understand with whom we are doing business?