MC47 Can we be "too authentic"?

too authentic i think is really a really interesting concept when we were talking before and you were talking about can you be too authentic my initial thing was like oh no authenticity is great and then but i was thinking about it afterwards but yeah just in the conversation i was like oh no i'm really pro-authenticity and then afterwards i was like thinking of examples about where you want to sort of temperate or moderate like just the idea of being like fully authentic like 100 natural self is not well it's funny because we always talk about bringing the whole person to work but we never bring with very few people do we bring the whole of ourselves to anything that's another thing i think there's i think the word authentic is i just think it's the wrong word to be using when we're talking about leadership and stuff yeah i think honest like the thing i like about authentic is that it has that kernel of i'm acting in a way which is true to my character this is representative of who i actually am it was like what we can quote you know i contain multitudes i think everybody has different aspects of themselves i have a long analogy i can use from it i know it's the listeners yes the listeners hello listeners it's lovely to have you here again with us welcome i'm talking to tim and my name is pilar if we haven't met before we've picked up where we left off a couple of coffees ago which is this concept of being authentic in management so we're probably going to spend about 20 minutes talking about this while we look at our coffees and get cold sometimes or your cup of tea um how does it feel tim as a tea drinker is that authentic for you you know for a long time i've drunk tea uh when other people drinking coffee and uh yeah i'm not most addicted to the tea i think just something like that coffee it's a good example it's a good example of uh we were talking about this authentic and when you said true to yourself i was thinking yeah i think true to self is a better expression for me than authentic i think that's exactly what we're talking about when we say whether we are authentic in our leadership style or in our way of treating people is are we being true to ourselves that's it it's not we don't have to be i don't know maybe there are similar things but i find it interesting that that is that is one thing of being true to self is you're drinking tea even though the convention is to have a coffee so that's not just the little things it's a good practice like i totally agree with you that i really bring my whole self anywhere outside my own head yeah this stuff goes on in my head i'm like that's not fit for anyone just stay inside uh and you know it's always appropriate for me the way i try to think about it is it's important that i recognize myself as behaving in character in the environment that i'm in so for me that there's an authenticity it'll be some aspect of my character some aspects i'm bringing out in a particular situation but i think about it as sort of looking through a doorway i want to recognize what's on the other side so the person who i am in my head i want to recognize the person who i am at home i want to recognize the person i am at work i want to recognize the person i am in a meeting and for me there should be a through line you know like set of doorways that they might line up exactly but you can see from one end to the other because it's still the same person and i find that i operate better in that context because i'm in more of a natural state i don't have to think so much about how i'm acting or what i need to say because i'm i'm being so true to myself but i think it's important to acknowledge that you know i'm a 50 year old tall white man living in australia where it might be lazier for me to do that and uh and feel comfortable doing that than for a lot of other people in different circumstances i don't know how much that's just my own experience well there's a couple of things that come to mind one is the the authenticity label or word i think that for me that comes through to values what are your values and what do you truly stand behind i think that aspect and hopefully they're aligned with what you're trying to do because i think that the whole thing about authenticity i think the problem starts to be when we are in an environment where it's difficult to do that and i think i think that's the important thing and sometimes and recognizing that that needs to happen for us to be happy and do a good job i have an example of a friend of mine who she couldn't be herself at work because she was a very uh a person i'll call it left-wing mentality just to to put a label on it and so she saw the world society and stuff and behavior in a certain way and she was in a very right-wing organization so there was a huge culture clash and this cognitive dissonance of constantly having to think i can't i can't say that here i can't behave like that here and i think that's where in a way to be authentic we need to understand ourselves and also we need to be in an environment where we can be authentic without it having repercussions i think it's also that culture fit as well i mean i'm going all over the place with this i think i'm trying to make it yeah absolutely well i think there's a couple of things there one is absolutely it it's important that we feel that who we are who we are on the inside who our character the values are important to us are acknowledged and valued and respected in the communities that are part of work being a big one and if you feel like well i can't share some pretty fundamental things about myself here because it would be rejected or marked or you know whatever then that's a that's a huge negative impact on the individual the other aspect i think around authenticity is it's not a one-way street it's not that i get to decide you know even with all the privilege i have i get to decide how authentic i'm going to be it's a negotiation or a dance that happens between the group or the environment and the individual and both should have to do some accommodating in that in that regard because you know the big argument that's like too authentic is the you know it's the arsehole so the person comes in and goes oh i'm gonna tell everybody how i feel because i'm an angry person and that's that's me being authentic i'm just gonna say it as i said that doesn't have to temper their behavior if they're going to be accepted in a group they have to find a way that they can act in accordance with their character but still behaving in a way that the group says it says okay so like you say there has to be some cultural alignment there but i think there's a bit of a like it's like a negotiation and then going back i mean i want to come back to that i don't want your other points about the privilege that some people feel and are allowed sometimes to be more authentic than others i read ages ago when i was first starting to look at organizational behavior so i don't know maybe it's 15 20 years ago there was an article in the harvard business review and it was about diversity and inclusion at work and well it was about diversity and they they told the story of a lab i think it was somewhere they made soups and they were trying to come up with this soup and there was someone in the there was a woman in the team who was chinese she was of chinese origin and i imagine that was in america and it was only through real like when they were getting really really stuck that she actually brought into the team her chinese cooking skills because she'd never felt before that moment that she actually could show up as that person well one you know she didn't want to stereotype but also i was like i don't want to be like the chinese woman who's bringing the chinese cooking skills into here and also she didn't feel like she could so i think that you're also right that yes one that authenticity uh is is more difficult for some demographics than others and there's also all the stuff that can be going in our head you know if i do this and then i'm stereotyping for this kind of thing so there's oh it's very complex psychologically yeah absolutely and you know i think there are positive and native manifestations of that like there might be circumstances where somebody who isn't confident for example or who doesn't like to express like pride in their own in their own achievements perhaps expressing you know some inauthentic uh what might feel inauthentic but developing that as a skill could actually be a positive positive outcome for them can you give me an example let's say that you've got somebody who says i'm just a quiet person i don't have good ideas i don't contribute and that might be something that's in front quite deeply it might be something that they feel quite strongly but it might not necessarily be true it might not be true that they don't have good ideas it might not be true that they shouldn't contribute uh and in fact it might be beneficial for the workplace if they do or if they learn a way to do it that they become comfortable with and so you know i think there should be some space there to go well this is my edge i don't feel comfortable going on my edge but maybe with the right sort of encouragement the right environment you know i can play a little bit at that edge and maybe i can learn how to express confidence in my ability so i can learn how to put forward an idea and so you know our character our view about our character might change in that you know a little bit over time maybe uh i mean obviously you go to i guess conditions have to be right to be able to do that yeah there's so much in there like identity i mean of course being authentic is understanding your identity also and how strong that identity is um there was an article in so there's an article in fast company about just bringing your whole self to work about idea and they cited an experiment from psychology today which was looking at perfectionism and the problems with that as well which sometimes people wanting to be perfect and wanting to feel well wanting to be more perfect than they are my authentic self is not perfect but i want to be perfect so what you're going to get is the version i would like to be so there's also as well as like when we're asking for someone to be authentic one they've got to be comfortable with who they are but it doesn't mean that they think that all they're the whole thing is good obviously but you have to be comfortable with who you are which many people are not and sometimes work can give you an opportunity to either express some behaviors which are aspirational or that you would hope or that you think make you a better work person so it's really i hadn't thought of just how complicated and messy this is yeah and because it's also it's very subjective you know the idea of if it's how comfortable i am that that's just entirely up to me and yet it's also going to be very heavily influenced by the environment because how comfortable i am with how i express myself always have a lot to do with my boss and my colleagues and how they react to me but i i once managed someone who i remember we were having a one-on-one conversation and we came up like do you feel like you're the same person at work as you are outside work and they're like oh no i don't feel like i am and then we talked about it a little bit and they said oh look outside work i'm a lot sillier i feel like i'm quite a silly person and and i said well this is all right because i'm for a city at work so they didn't feel comfortable i was like well you know i'm rolling it pretty extensively but uh you know we talked about a little bit like what would it feel like do you think it might be a positive or a negative to let that side of you be in the workplace and i mean i was keen to see it because you know i love a little bit of silliness and uh and they did they played around with it a bit things became a lot more fun which was which was great so you know it lifted the atmosphere of the workplace and i believe so then it made a difference because they started to feel more like connected to themselves so that that i think is you know is this a benefit that we can get where we feel comfortable to dial up our authentic authenticity we need another word because every time i say authentic i know that you don't know i'm warming up to it i'm warming up to it honestly but what you're saying also is about that sometimes it's not even about the environment or anything but it could be the expectations of what we think our authentic work self is also we might want something we might want separation between who we are at work who we are outside of work and i hadn't thought of that as well that sometimes we we should let people do what they want but it's more it's so complex because it's like this expectation of maybe i've grown up believing that i have to be different at work than i am as a person and that is like all the and you but i'm also thinking that my husband who who is dutch and of course they are much less hierarchical and i think there's more of a blend of the conversations around life work and stuff i don't know it's a much flatter society than in the uk and his first job in the uk he was shocked by how different his manager was at work and on the pub in the pub he was shocked he could he just he could not handle it i mean he left and he left because of maybe he just isn't like there were a lot of problems but that was such a shock and i think that that is something to bear in mind is how are we showing up and the dissonance that we can be creating in the people around us by being one thing in one space and one thing in another yeah well everybody everybody loses in that in that environment and it reminds me very much of like the office statement you know like that like being super like fake professional uh at work and then trying to be like the fun the fun whitey person outside of it it's just awkward but i think there's also this concept that on too authentic i've also experienced people who have shared to a level that i wasn't like i was a manager and i wasn't comfortable or skillful enough to be able to deal with it in a way that was beneficial for them and for me you know i've had people who've sort of shared aspects of themselves and i've gone oh i don't really know what to say or what to do with that information or how to fit that into my understanding of what we're doing together so that that for me is a vote against me well i wonder if that that's related to something else i'm thinking around this which is that sometimes we confuse being authentic so being true to yourself and your values and your person and being true to your character because i think that's what authenticity is about being true to your character and showing parts of your character and not a fake version of that but i think sometimes it's confused with talking about your personal life so i can be completely authentic but you don't know anything about my personal life but you know me and in fact that's something that with all the with all the other podcasts that i do i know that some people feel like they know me very very very well and yet i rarely share personal stuff like if i ask someone do you know what my life outside of work looks like they probably would say no we know that you have a husband and that you do pilates every now and then but they might not know very much and i think that is one of the things is that when we're talking authentic it doesn't mean we need to know about your personal life and i wonder whether that sometimes blurs this in all sorts of way like people thinking being uncomfortable with being authentic because they think it's about sharing personal stuff yeah that i don't have to sit with that for a while it's really changed my thinking on it like that suggests that there's a need for uh a degree of sort of awareness and skill on both parts you know on the on the part of like if you're talking about like this idea of the manager and the person they manage the person that they manage has has to have a degree of skill and awareness in terms of how they want to share how they're going to communicate the character as well as as well as receiving it and i guess part of that is is sort of testing the water is it is it safe to talk about this is the person comfortable in this environment you know yeah it's very nuanced people people make it so difficult and so much fun so talking about people how about our listeners around the table we'd love to hear your experiences of well what we're going back to what you think about this authentic thing i think for me i've really labeled now that it's about character for me it's character and values that's where the authentic thing sits sits well for me so yeah so we can continue using the word authentic if you want until we've another one but for now we can use the email address managementcafepodcast at gmail.com or you can use the contact form over at managementcafepodcast.com Tim anything you want to say as we exit the cafe before we leave our listeners behind hopefully we get some feedback from listeners about how they feel about it I wonder if there's anyone who feels like they're fully authentic they bring their whole self out at all times yeah I'd be curious about that well listeners coffee's over for us now it's over to you thank you for joining us at the Management Cafe remember you can subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use to make sure you get a weekly dose of reflection our website is management.caf and on Twitter we are at Management Cafe that's all for this episode from myself, Pilar Ortiz and our fellow co-host Tim Burgess thank you for listening