Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success. I'm Ashley

Melentight. This time, how open should we be about our private lives when we're on the job,

especially when we're away from home.

I've always been quite guarded about revealing details of my personal life, as I wouldn't really

want that information to be out there, out of my control, I suppose. But not everyone believes

discretion is everything. I also don't want to go out of my way

to play mental games and think about how can I do my part to make sure this person is comfortable

by my constructing a false reality. Coming up, when work, social media, and the rest of your life collide.

At the beginning of the year, I heard from a listener in the UK.

We're just using her first name, Marie.

She's in her late 20s. She lives in works in the

north of England. And she's been grappling with this problem related to her work. Her job involves

a lot of networking and travel inside and outside the UK. I've always been happy with the way,

you know, that I do my job and I think I'm very good, well, you know, not very good, but I think I'm good at it.

Typically female take down of one's own abilities? Check.

I've just become, I think, increasingly aware of the fact that part of my success in my professional life seems to depend on how much of myself I'm giving socially.

Now, not all of us are natural networkers, let's face it. I did a whole show called The Hell

of Networking a few years ago. But Marie is good at the talking to strangers part. It's just that

she wants to keep those relationships work-based. She doesn't

want to share too much about her non-work self, and she feels that reluctance may be hurting her

career. I am happy at events and went on trade delegations and things like that, being sociable

and going out to dinner. you know a lot of these

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