Who Are You?

During the first team meeting after Jane got promoted from individual contributor to manager, she admitted she was nervous about the new role and asked her team for help. Her honesty and vulnerability were counter productive. Instead of regarding her as authentic, Jane’s direct reports perceived her as weak and unable to do her job. They didn’t trust her decisions, making it impossible to lead them. Her leadership style should have evolved as she gained experience, but instead Jane lost the courage necessary to promote her ideas.

What Bringing Your Whole Self to Work Means

• Being both courageous and comfortable enough with coworkers to reveal both personal interests and flaws, thus creating space for them to reciprocate
• Normalizing what employees experience outside the workplace affects them in the workplace
• Includes both the impression we give of ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) and the impression we have of coworkers
• Some elements we consider: authenticity (“This is me, warts and all”), humility (“I don’t know everything”), and vulnerability (“I need your help”)

Bringing your whole self to work is a relatively new concept. It presupposes that employees want to find purpose and higher meaning through their jobs. During the industrial revolution, no one looked for engagement with their work. They worked to buy food, clothing and shelter. They looked for purpose and higher meaning at church, in nature, or through art. Even today, some employees will never see their jobs as a source of fulfillment. If employees spend their energy trying to fit in to the culture, then they don’t have a lot left to be innovative, engaged, and productive.

Why You Don’t

• Maybe, like Jane, you brought your whole self to work in the past and got judged or were less than your coworkers expected
• The culture of your workplace is not conducive to sharing, keeping conversations at surface level
• You fear revealing certain parts of your personality will make you appear unprofessional (e.g., you remain silent in a meeting after your feelings were hurt)
• You are ashamed of something in your background
• You feel pressured to always be right because your work culture does not support learning from failure

Why You Should

The more willing you are to be authentically vulnerable, the more positive an impact you have on both your work and your team. Bringing your whole self to work: 

• Breaks down silos
• Accelerates trust
• Creates a culture where honesty is valued
• Removes the stress of hiding flaws
• Allows genuine connection (critical to successful networking)
• Enhances productivity and performance
• Boosts creative problem solving
• Helps managers resolve conflict in a constructive way 

Someone who recognizes when to risk being vulnerable also recognizes a smart business risk when they see it.

How You Can

Start the authenticity ball rolling by:

• Both recognizing and appreciating coworkers. There is a difference. Recognizing is feedback on performance. E.g.,“You gave an excellent presentation today.” Appreciating is expressing gratitude for valuable human qualities (e.g., humility, kindness, humor) regardless of whether the deliverable succeeded or failed. E.g., “It’s obvious you care deeply about serving our customers.” Recognizing and appreciating them helps coworkers feel seen. This leads to deepening trust and improving job performance
• Having a growth mindset. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn, and we learn more when we do it together
• Leading through both modeling and celebrating behaviors like: speaking up, taking smart risks, and owning mistakes. This enables your workforce to feel psychologically safe which leads to creativity which leads to productivity which leads to revenue

How comfortable are you bringing your whole self to work? Please share in the comments.