The Behaviour Effect

Were you at a Halloween Party?  Was it a costume party? Did you wear a mask?

Personally I can’t stand masks.  I’ve always had a bit of a fear of someone in a mask.  Very disconcerting I think.   Not being able to see the facial expression.  Or work out what the person is thinking or feeling.  My friends thought me highly amusing as I cringed and switched the TV programme over when Bo Selecta came on.  I just didn’t find him funny.  And it wasn’t the humour, it was the mask.  I just couldn’t get past the fact that I couldnt see what his face was saying.

How did you feel in your mask for Halloween?  Did you feel like a different person?  Did you enjoy having a different persona for the evening?  How did you feel speaking to people who were wearing masks?

In actual fact, we all wear masks everyday.  Not plastic physical masks but the ’social mask’ that hides our true feelings or thoughts.  We have the ‘professional mask’ we wear at work….not wanting to provide many clues as to how we are feeling in case our colleagues think less of us, or believe that we cannot be competent due to other factors.  We put up a pretense that all is good so that others will not get the ‘wrong’ idea.  In the Johari window our facade is a section of ourselves that we know but other’s don’t.  This is the section, which encourages us to engage in games-playing, trickery, and the like.  The larger this section, the less chance we have of developing truly meaningful and open relationships with others because such relationships are usually based heavily on trust.  Here, the hidden agenda resides.

Do other people’s masks work or do you instinctively know they are hiding something or telling ‘white lies’?

Obviously we need to provide a certain level of professionalism in our work life but if we continuously hide behind a mask then how are others to know anything real about us.  We know that understanding each others stresses and strains can make for a more beneficial relationship yet we are scared to reveal this side of us.  We cry ‘Noone understands!’.  We dislike the assumptions people make about us.  Does wearing our professionalism mask prevent others from correctly dealing with us?

Are there people in your life who you would really love to know better?  Do you ever wish that someone would drop the mask so that you knew what was really going on?  How would our behaviour change if we all dropped our masks?