The power of Authenticity
Are you allowing your colleagues to get to know YOU?
Recently, I was asked by Todd Tukey “What advice would you give a 14 year-old based on what you’ve learned to date?” Todd was writing a series of blog posts intended to empower youth. (Here is first post)
I thought long and hard about this question. I turned over different tidbits on my education, leveraging support networks, and never being afraid to ask for help. Obviously I thought about working hard, the value of teamwork, etc. I thought about striving to be the best, setting clear goals, and more. The things that were coming to my mind were aspects that drove the first 10 years of my career, and continue to be important.
But in the end, they all paled in comparison to one thing that’s driven my career, my relationships, and my friendships the most: being unapologetically me.
When I got to that place and understood the power of authenticity, I wanted to sit down and write something about it. Then I checked myself. So many people — especially the leadership “gurus” — bring up authenticity as a topic. It can seem kind of old. It can also seem preachy. And then my other fear, which is maybe a bit misguided, is that if I put down a bunch of revealing thoughts on authenticity, I’d somehow jinx myself.
I turned all that over in my head for a while and finally decided to put down some thoughts. Here goes.
Being phony is stressful.
Duh.
Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University, has done a bunch of work around being authentic vs. being phony in work contexts. Here’s a quote from one of her write-ups that struck me:
“We shouldn’t overlook the psychological distress that comes with inauthentic behavior,” she says. “Just as an immoral act violates widely accepted societal moral norms and produces negative feelings, an inauthentic act violates being true to oneself, and it can take a similar toll.”
We talk a lot about immoral actions at work, especially in the context of inflated CEO pay or executives taking liberties. But all in all, that stuff is rare. People being inauthentic at work? That happens every minute. It happens for different reasons, but I’d argue No. 1 is notions around professionalism. People are afraid that if they act ‘real’ at work, it might offend a boss or higher-up — and that will limit their career trajectory. I know. I’ve felt that way myself.
Over time, I’ve come to look at it like this: some people will love me. Some will hate me. The majority fall somewhere in the middle. But as you work and develop other relationships, you can’t alter your personality or hide key parts of who you are. That decision — to be yourself, always — is one of the most critical career choices you ever make. It’s a lot bigger than whether to jump from Job A to Job B, if you plan to be inauthentic at both spots.
Harness the power of letting yourself be YOU.
Here are a few benefits I saw from pursuing authenticity at work:
My work relationships got stronger
Early in my career, I thought that to succeed you had to like the same things as your colleagues, do the same things that your colleagues do, and talk about the same things as your colleagues. When I made the decision to be myself, talking about things that mattered to me, I realized just how wrong I was.
My colleagues actually were interested in knowing more about who I was. I hadn’t been very social out of work in those days, and my colleagues were assuming I just wasn’t a social person. Once I contextualized that, and started being me, those dynamics got deeper. I felt like I wasn’t “hiding” anything anymore.
My personal relationships also got stronger
For a long time, I kept a strict ‘church and state’ between my partner at home and my work (same with my family/friends and work). It was a very strong, very defined line for me.
Over time, as I broke down those walls, I saw some of my personal relationships change. My friends and my partner saw why I was working late. They met other people who were there until 8pm dealing with a difficult banking client on a consulting engagement. They were also able to see what made me happy in a work context, what made me upset, and get to know the personalities of the people I was spending 10-12 hours/day with. This made my personal relationships stronger because we had more of a lexicon. There was more to discuss. And now my partner and friends had access to a part of my life I had previously closed off.
My output got stronger
Think of it like this: if you have a colleague with limited English language skills in an American meeting, what tends to happen? When a big idea is being discussed, that colleague might have a great perspective but struggle to verbalize. He expends so much energy trying to explain/contextualize the idea in English that the value of the idea diminishes. He’s putting all his effort towards form, whereas it should go to the more valuable facet, output and outcomes.
That’s an imperfect analogy, but it’s how I think about authenticity too. When you’re worried about every step you’re taking in terms of corporate culture (or pleasing bosses or anything else), that’s occupying a lot of your headspace. It’s hard to be strategic when you’re always checking yourself. But when you’re being yourself, in a state of flow, the ideas and output are there. I was able to deliver more and sell more. All my standard business performance metrics went up.
Hopefully my approach to this topic wasn’t too tired compared to other stuff you’ve seen or read. If you’ve had experiences at work where you’ve had to check your real self, let me know about them. What did you do? How did your thinking evolve?
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Related Posts:
Defining the Perfect Employee – Top Traits Series Trait 1: Hard working AND talented
Investing in talent for the long-term
Peer accountability is critical to success in teams
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
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“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day, you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls are family, health, friends, integrity are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.
The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to. ~Dodie Smith
I became a Vegan. Yep. Cold turkey, I stopped eating meat, dairy, and anything that did not come from the ground. I posted tons of food photos of my daily meals (Flikr followers can see them) and enjoyed feeling better than I had for years. I became the foursquare “Mayor” of my gym, believe it or not, and targeted averaging 7-8 hours of sleep per night instead of 4-5. And I lost about 15 pounds, almost all of them “fat pounds”.
Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure. — Jewish Saying