The More You Know: A Conversation on Personal Knowledge and Human Connection at Work

In this scholar-to-scholar conversation, Liza Y. Barnes talks with Ashley Hardin about her paper The More You Know: The Impact of Personal Knowledge on Interpersonal Treatment at Work. They explore how everyday glimpses into coworkers’ lives can build trust, empathy, and stronger teams.

Liza: Your research highlights the positive effects of knowing more about colleagues' personal lives. What’s the most actionable way managers can encourage personal knowledge sharing while respecting boundaries?

Ashley: Managers can encourage sharing personal knowledge through modeling – being open about their lives outside of work. This signals that sharing is acceptable, changing perceptions of workplace norms. Though I did not specifically look at managerial behaviors in my empirical work, I did many interviews at the onset of this research project. Many individuals would discuss the team culture, set by their supervisor, that led to more sharing amongst teammates in general.

Liza: You found that having more personal knowledge about colleagues can lead to humanization and increased responsiveness. Can you share an example from your research that illustrates how this dynamic plays out in the workplace?

Ashley: The best example I’ve seen of this in action is Google’s One Simple Thing Initiative. In this practice, individuals in teams share a personal goal for each fiscal quarter. Shared goals could include a manager’s desire to have breakfast with his children three mornings a week or an analyst’s desire to make it to a music lesson a few nights a week. Not only can adopting these practices directly encourage the sharing of personal information though vocalizing the goal itself, but it can also indirectly signal an acceptance of discussing and knowing about teammates’ personal lives.

Liza: For leaders navigating hybrid or remote work environments, what specific strategies would you recommend for building and maintaining personal knowledge among team members?

Ashley: Cameras on! Filtered background off! In a related research project A Window into Coworkers’ Worlds: The Relational Outcomes of Learning Vivid, Unintentional, and Nonwork-Related Information about Coworkers, my coauthors and I find that a less filtered look into someone’s life during video meetings can lead to increased desire to invest in coworker relationships by increasing perceptions of authenticity, humanness, and trustworthiness. This is because gaining personal knowledge about coworkers during video calls often feels less filtered, it is more vivid (you see their life playing out), and it is often about nonwork topics that may not arise in the office. For example, you learn about the characteristics of someone’s dog as it bounds through the background, you see their parenting style as they interact with their kids who popped up unexpectedly, or you learn about a hobby based on gear that might be seen in the background.

Liza: What surprised you the most in your research about the accumulation of personal knowledge and its effects on workplace relationships? How can this insight reshape organizational practices?

Ashley: I was surprised by the positive, persistent effect of personal knowledge. I thought this effect may be dependent on features of that knowledge – does your colleague have the same values, does your colleague’s life consistently interfere with work. However, learning more about a colleague, regardless of these features, humanizes that colleague. We focus more on the fact that this is a unique person with their own set of needs, and we become more motivated to attend to those needs, supporting them in reaching their goals. I think we have a lot of fears about letting our colleagues learn about our lives outside of work and I hope this research helps to allay some of those fears and unlock the potential for more human connection at work.