Two+ Faced

I’m confused.  And I’m riddled with hypocrisy.  On the one hand in my personal life, I’m a fairly strongly opinionated,  passionate, stubborn, hasty, realistic and honest but cheerful  (so I’m told) with slightly obsessive controlling tendencies.  At work, I’m definitely less opinionated, conservative, open, leaning toward optimistic, patient (I bite my tongue VERY hard), professional, polite, and overly excited (for the most part).  My outward appearance usually changes to match where I am as well, on my time off a little bit more fashion forward, trendier makeup and hair, at the office, hair pulled back, glasses, conservative neutral makeup/sometimes more severe, with a suit.

This made me think about the need for a poker face especially in this industry, or the need to have two or more “different faces” or personas to suit the situation and to appeal to different types of customers or consumers.  Regarding my last post on transparency, should I disclose everything being truly transparent?  Does my client/guest really need to know in my personal life that I’m having a bad day, do I need to show a more decisive/hard side, or am I being too harsh?  In certain situations with the right customer or if we’ve built a close enough relationship yes we can chat/laugh about a few personal facts and relationship build, but with those that are on time constraints or less than chatty, real Type A personalities, they want to just see me as the professional business person, and probably prefer to just talk business, get done, and go. 

I relate the cosmetics industry and their general advertising campaigns of before and after shots, and how they identify a need for people to match their different personas with the outside package and the feeling they want to portray.  Their products have the ability to transform even the plainest looking people into visions of glamour and drama, and have countless different ways to make a “day look” and a “night look”, severe or light, suited to any situation.  How do you use your outside appearance to reflect the persona you want to be associated with at your workplace, or personal life?    

I’ve tried to find a balance with my personality to my life’s tasks, and how others see me, identifying the best way to use it, but still a work in progress.