Published on: May 7, 2025 at 7:39 pm
It’s OK to let your personality shine through in the workplace. In fact, decorating your office or cubicle with meaningful objects can help you bond with your boss, coworkers, and customers or clients.
Academy of Management Scholar Kris Byron of Georgia State University said that the things people use to personalize their workspaces—or the absence of such objects—symbolize who they are and who they want to be. Through their symbolic representations, they find common ground through:
• Shared experiences or affinities
• A common understanding of work roles
• Personal information
All these things can help develop relationships among people at work. Byron and research colleague Gregory Laurence of the University of Michigan-Flint cowrote an Academy of Management Journal article on this topic.
“A big thing we found is that there were other things that were really important for work relationships,” Byron said.
“For example, there are items that people have that they thought offer a common ground—when you come into my office, you might see that I went to Emory University, and so you say, ‘I went to Emory too,’ or you’re from Atlanta, and I’m from Atlanta, or there’s a photo of your pet: ‘You have a dog, and I have a dog,’” she said.
“There’s something that we can find that we have in common and that can form a basis for the beginning of our relationship.”
Byron and Laurence also found that a lot of decorations were about a unique niche that the person filled or a role that he or she played at work.
“I remember this one study participant who said, ‘My special role at work is that I’m the office historian,’ and that wasn’t part of her actual job description, her formal work role, but everyone knew that if they had questions about how things were done in the past, that they would always come to her,” Byron said. “She ended up with personalization in her office that reflected that special role that she played or niche that she filled at work.
“If you think about sibling groups, there’s always a sibling who’s the clown, and this person’s the serious one, and this sibling is the rebel, or whatever,” she said. “That’s a good metaphor for what we found: People presented themselves as unique.
“Even if they might have the same work role as other people, they have some personalization in their office or cubicle to convey their uniqueness within a common role.”
