Hall of Mirrors

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/01/should-i-talk-to-my-boss-about-my-coworkers-oversharing-about-mental-health.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34955

A reader writes:

I am in a front-line commercial role at a tech start-up. I am responsible for bringing in new business, and this story pertains to my colleague Zayne, who manages a lot of the back-end, integrations side of things.

Zayne is fantastic at what he does. The guy might actually be a genius, and I don’t say that lightly. He has a ton of ideas, seems to really love what he does, and is good at it. He’s also very open about his mental health, which I admire but it can admittedly take me back sometimes. I grew up in a family where we often don’t share things like that, and it’s something I’m trying to unpack as an adult, but even so I find myself at a loss for words when Zayne will share details about his mental state that I’d struggle to open up about to my closest friends. When I met him a week into joining the company, he told me he’d previously been suicidal. I’m aware that mindset may be coloring my judgment here.

We just had a major tradeshow, which is important for us as events are our biggest source of leads. While I’m the only person whose job description is to bring in business, these events are really all-hands on deck. Zayne came along too and, while he isn’t commercially minded, he does know everything there is to know about the product so he’s great to have in case conversations get too technical. At one point in the event, there were only two of us on the stand, and I was speaking to a lot of people passing by whereas Zayne was hanging back, which I get as he’s not in his element the way I am at these events, though it was annoying to see potential clients slip away when I was engaged in talking.

At one point, I started a conversation with two senior leaders. I was trying to uncover what their pain points were and if we were a fit, as well as build rapport. Zayne joined my conversation, which to be honest I didn’t need as I wanted to guide it a specific way, but I wasn’t about to tell him to back off in front of the two prospects. They were talking about their workplace initiatives and mentioned they supported mental health awareness. I was going to mention what our own software does to support this, but Zayne jumped in and started talking about his own mental health, mentioning that he’d experienced a dissociative episode on route to the conference and how he’d been struggling with this for years. I found this super inappropriate and was basically stunned into silence because of how uncomfortable I was. The two prospects began comforting him, but I sensed from their tone and body language that they were also taken off-guard by this and didn’t really know what to say, and he just kept going.

The conversation came back round to work eventually and Zayne had some valuable insight on the technical side of things. After they left and I gathered their details, he turned to me and said brightly, “Wow, that went great!” I wasn’t sure what to say so I just agreed, but I wanted to kick him for being so oblivious. It’s one thing saying that to me as a coworker, but I felt it was inappropriate to say something that personal to strangers, never mind strangers we want to sell to.

I’m not sure whether I should mention this to our boss. I don’t know how much of my view on this is colored by my own discomfort, but also because I know how important it is for us as a start-up to get new clients in — and quite frankly that could have cost me commission. Should I mention it? If so, how? Now that we’re growing, we don’t necessarily need all of us on the stand but I know Zayne enjoys these events. I also don’t want to shame him for having mental health issues. Is there a way to tactfully bring it up? Should I?

Yes, you should talk to your boss and share what happened and your sense that the prospective clients weren’t entirely comfortable.

In an ideal world, your boss would talk forthrightly with Zayne about boundaries when he’s representing the company. She may or may not be a good enough manager to do that skillfully, but I do think you need to let her know what happened since you witnessed it firsthand … and particularly since part of your job is managing prospect relationships and this risks impacting them.

The idea isn’t to reinforce a stigma around mental health, but rather to reinforce the idea that there’s a time and place for some topics. Zayne also shouldn’t be talking about politics, religion, or sex with business contacts, or going into heavy detail about a medical condition or his divorce or an estrangement from his family. It’s not that those topics are taboo or wrong or that they’re inappropriate across the board; it’s that they’re inappropriate in a business setting — because they risk alienating people who feel differently, are too heavy for a work context, and take the focus way off the thing you want it on. It’s not just the latter, of course — you might have an in-depth conversation about, I don’t know, sports as a way of building rapport with a client — it’s that they’re not what people are expecting (or usually wanting) in a work context and have a high risk of bringing people down.

A lot of people understand this intuitively — especially people in a relationship-heavy job like yours — but others don’t and need explicit coaching on it.

The post should I talk to my boss about my coworker’s oversharing about mental health? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/01/should-i-talk-to-my-boss-about-my-coworkers-oversharing-about-mental-health.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34955