Personal Lessons in Leadership: Authenticity

Is It Really Always Best to “Be Yourself”?

You’ve been in this room before. Maybe hundreds of times. It’s used whenever a presentation is being made.

It’s a simple room. Exactly what you would expect of a basic conference room.

A long rectangular shape with walls painted a neutral colour. The decor is is nothing special. Awards, posters and memorabilia from the organization’s history. It’s supposed to make you feel like your part of the team.

And it does.

Until you don’t agree with what’s being said. Now you feel like a a big red dot on a bright white canvas.

Just be yourself is some of the most popular advice people will give you these days. Everyone is encouraging you to be authentic and bring you whole self to work.

Depending on who you are speaking with or what you happen to be reading, there is more that can be added in. They’ll tell you that being authentic doesn’t mean that you always have to be exactly the same. That there is a time and a place for different versions of yourself.

I’m a self-developed leader. That doesn’t mean that I never had good role models or mentors to help along the way.

It’s more that I have taken leadership on personally.

I have been fortunate to lead teams for almost 15 years now. The lessons and perspectives that I’ll share in this series are my own learnings from a career development path that involved a lot of sink or swim trials.

I’m an advocate of being authentic.

Not only in a leadership role, but in whatever role you happen to be in. The unique qualities each of us bring to the table is what takes an idea from good to great.

I don’t disagree with the statement that there’s a time and a place for versions of yourself.

With any situation in life, personal or professional, you need to be aware of the context of what’s going on around you.

The Lesson

If you are coming in every day, and you are working to do the right thing for your team, the business and your customers — then be authentically you.

This means that you aren’t being petty, you aren’t playing politics and you aren’t making things personal.

Leaders have to able to inspire and motivate the people around them. This is only going to happen when you are being you and people can feel it.

This isn’t always easy. We live in a world with a constant pressure to conform and be a “team player”. Being authentic isn’t about being you when things are easy. It’s about being you and sticking to what you believe when you might be the only one who believes.

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