46 | The Problem with authenticity at work

Hey there!

This episode is a bit impromptu, I hadn't planned on recording a second episode this week.

But I've been thinking a lot about authenticity lately. How can we be authentic at work. How can we be more natural. 

So I invite you to join me in this thought-starter discussion about authenticity, and how can you be more authentic at work. 

xo
Liz 

Well, hello there. And this episode is a bit of an impromptu. Episode, I hadn't planned on recording a second episode this week. But I've been really thinking a lot about authenticity lately. And reflecting on it. And I thought I would share some of my thoughts with you to get your wheels, turning, to get some thoughts, starters out there for you and the conversations you might be having. Um,

Either conversations in your own head, which is perfectly fine, perfectly natural or actual conversations. Maybe you can take this to your team. If you have that level of trust, maybe you can take it to a trusted mentor or to appear to your leader. To whoever just to have these conversations about authenticity

so the reason it's been on my mind to think about authenticity and wanting to talk about it is because I have just opened early applications for my mastermind program. And in preparation for that, I was going back over different notes. I'd taken and. Just different conversations I'd had over the years.

With people who are really amazing fit for my program. And a couple of words really stood out to me. It came up over and over was about being natural, wanting to be true to myself. I want to sh. Be seen as a natural leader. I want to show up as a natural leader. I want to be myself. That was a recurring theme that I have seen over and over in the people who have both come into my role and also have really done really well in the kinds of programs that I run. So as an aside,

As a shameless plug aside, my mastermind program is open. You may have heard about this already, if you get my emails, but the early applications are open. If you are interested, head on over to the manta ambition.com/mastermind. For more information about that program. But. Let's get back to the topic about being authentic. So if you're like anything of the people that are coming into my world and in this orbit,

We want to be naturally want to be ourselves. You. We want to be authentic. And I have two main thoughts that I really wanted to put out in the world. Some different, uh, two different. Aspects of authenticity. I've been thinking a lot about that. I wanted to share with you. So the first one I want to start with is the idea.

So if we think about, you know, I want to be authentic and I want to be true to myself, right. Like I feel like less something that I'm pretty sure most of us feel like I want to be true to myself. So here's something I really want you to think about and consider it's the idea that. You know, you can't be true to yourself before you've spent time.

Really in deeply getting to know yourself. Okay, I'm going to say that one more time. You can't be true to yourself before you've spent time truly and deeply getting to know yourself. You know, this is something that I spent a lot of time, both in my bootcamp program, but also we do a lot of mastermind. Is that self-reflection is that self discovery work?

Coming in with curiosity and a term, my clients always hear me say is neutral curiosity being neutral about it. So stepping away from judgment, stepping away from having expectations, but ourselves and just truly getting to know ourselves. Do you know, some, sometimes we approach it with love, right?

If you've ever heard the term, you know, I'm going on a date with yourself, you know, that true love for yourself, that true joy and inspiration, you know, how can you inspire yourself? How can you find joy in who you are no matter what's happening around you. That's something I think about a lot and I say a lot.

Is it no matter what's happening around you, how can you be true to yourself? Right. How can you show up as you? So I really want to kind of give a call to action for yourself to find ways to get to know yourself. So. Again, with the shameless plug. If you're, if you're interested in doing that in a really safe group environment with the guided coaching, that would be me. Um, it definitely took out the mastermind, but it doesn't have to be the mastermind. You don't have to join my program to do this. Right. You can do this yourself through reflections.

Um, some people love to journal, but not everyone wants to journal you. Don't I know there's a lot of calls for journaling out there and I'm sure I've done it myself, where I said, Hey, go journal about this, but not everyone's into journaling. Like to be perfectly honest, I hardly ever journal like just the way my brain works.

It almost moves so quickly. It trips over itself. I have a really hard time slowing my brain down to journal. So what I did it says I go out for walks. I put on music or even listening to podcasts. So those of you who are, oh, walking, listening to podcasts, high five. I see you. Um, Whatever it is for you to reflect, find that place of reflection that is perfectly fine. Like you don't have to do it in a certain way. There's no right or wrong way to do reflection.

It's just doing it. That's important. And for other people it's doing it verbally, right? Verbally processing the information, having conversations. Whether it's, um, verbally processing or written, right? Maybe texting with the bestie. Do you have a bestie that you can go back and forth about this stuff and have those conversations have those deeper discussions around this?

Whatever it is. I want you to find that way to really learn who you are really love, who you are really find joy in. It really find inspiration and. Really come to that place of almost feels really grounded, right? Like really, truly believing in yourself, starts with getting to know yourself. Right? Who is it that, who is it that you are? Who is that person? What is it that you believe? What is it, what impact are you trying to make in the world?

There's so many questions that you can ask. To, to start to get to know yourself. So that's something, that's my VR. As I first thought I really want to share with you. That's a really, I really strongly believe in that about. You need to get to know yourself. You have to get to know yourself. And what my guess is is that you probably know the people in your world a lot better maybe than you even know yourself, right? If you're the kind of person who finds their way into my world, you care so much about other people you're empathetic.

You're sensitive. You are observant, you are mindful of others. And how often have you given that to yourself? So this is, this is almost like a gift to give that love and empathy, compassion, and curiosity, and interest. You know, he can give that to yourself as well. So that's my note. My first thought about being authentic, right? You can't be true to yourself before you've spent time truly and deeply getting to know yourself.

The second thought, and this is something I have been sharing in different workshops and webinars over the last year or so, maybe just a touch over a year. And it's the idea about what is authenticity anyways, especially in the workplace, we hear a lot about authenticity. You know, the, the, the discussion, the kind of the trend of the discussion and went roughly about, I would say probably a five or six years. I didn't do the, I didn't search on Google scholar before coming on, but I'll go back and check if I'm right.

My, I believe it's about six, seven years or so many, five years. That that we've been talking about authenticity. In the literature in discussions about this, about, you know, bringing your whole self to work and being your authentic self to work. And there was a lot of push for that. There's a real like move and towards it. And recently.

I've been thinking about the last one to two years, maybe I'm sure it's been there before that, but it's been getting a lot more prominent than the last one to two years is about the fact that that is not always safe for people in the workplace to be their authentic selves. Um, in some cases it's, it's, um, very strongly unsaved, both emotionally.

Um, possibly even physically, but more so emotionally, mentally, because when you bring your, your. True self to work. It's not necessarily. Well, regarded and well treated. And especially if you're in a toxic workplace, that could be very harmful. So it can be, it can almost be a harmful call to action, just to expect everyone to bring themselves, bring their wholesales and who know who they are to the workplace. So there is a, there.

There is a bit of a company. Um, not a competition, but there's a bit of a dispute in the well. Literature. Like the forums. Dot com literature and the LinkedIn post literature. Um, about this and it hasn't quite come to resolution. Because there still is this concept of like, well, shouldn't, we still be authentic at work. It's, you know,

Sure. Sure. It's okay. It's unsafe, but shouldn't we be yourselves? The literature hasn't quite come to a resolution on this. And. W one thing that I, that I came on. Like I said about a year ago, maybe year and a half ago or so when I was thinking in authenticity, what really made sense for me and my brain and everything I've read.

It really made sense to think of authenticity as being. When you show up at work, when you are saying something, when you were writing something, when you were whatever you're doing. To me authenticity means that you truly believe in how you're showing up. Hey. You, you believe in what you're saying, you believe in how you're doing.

You're not, um, You know, saying one thing to your team and then going behind a closed door and saying something else to someone else. W, um, It's different. In the sense of you might, you might go behind a closed door to have a different discussion. Like I'm not saying that's not authentic, but it said.

It's, you're not, when you are talking to your team or when you're talking behind the closed door, you do believe in how you're showing up. Like there is, there is a genuineness there to Musa or there's a genuineness there. That to me is what the authenticity piece is, is that you're not, um, pretending to be.

Something you're not. Now to circle back on that piece, around whether it's, what is that always possible? I don't know, I don't have the answers around that, but, but that is, to me what authenticity is. And part of it is the root part of the reason I landed on that is because. You know, the idea of bringing yourself your true self to work or bring your whole self to work. It's like, I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but I mean, I'm a lot of things.

There's a lot to my personal, I have different components and facets to who I am. Right. I show up in different ways in different places. I have different parts of me that I can bring forward. Depending on the, on the circumstance that is still true to who I am. But it doesn't mean that, that I can bring all of that forward. And it doesn't necessarily mean that all of it's really appropriate again with the circumstances, right. To bring for a certain aspects, depending on the.

The circumstance they're in, like, like I can be really silly, but I also might be in a situation that's really serious. It doesn't necessarily make sense for me to bring that silliness. To a really grave situation. Now that said, I don't know. Maybe it does, depending on the context of hanging on the circumstance. Right. I don't think there's any hard and fast rules on this.

But I do think that it's very, you're asking a lot of people to tell them, to bring their whole selves to work because we have a lot of components to us. And, you know, we. To, uh, to do a shout out to the scifi movie that swept the Oscars. You know, we can't be everything everywhere all at once, you know, shout out to my side-by-side, but we can't write that.

That's too much to expect. So that's one piece around authenticity. And. You know, Expecting. Someone to quote. Be themselves and bring their whole selves to work like that. Put that's putting a lot. On people and it's putting a lot on ourselves to expect it. We always show up with all of us and who we are with our whole cells and, you know, bring all of you to work. Like that's a lot to expect.

So to me, it just seems much simpler and it just, it makes a lot more sense for me, at least from how, and that's what I want to offer as a thought starter, because maybe you'll totally disagree with me. And that is totally fine if you disagree with this, but I want to offer the thought starter that.

Authenticity is just that simpler piece of when you're showing up, you genuinely believe in how you're showing up. You know, you can genuinely get behind the words you're saying. And to go back to that piece and authenticity about getting to know yourself. If you were being asked to deliver a message that you genuinely don't believe in.

That is hard. You know, I will give, uh, uh, recognize that that is very difficult. And that's where, you know, it might be a situation for having some real honest conversations with the people who are asking you to deliver that message. Or maybe it's about like, like that first part I talked about getting to notice I'll figure out. Okay.

Figuring out. Okay. How, how can I be genuine with this message? How do I show up? That I can be genuine with this message to the people that I need to share it with. And that's why. Circling back to my first point. I really just fundamentally believe you. You need to know yourself. Like you, you have to know yourself to know how to show up authentically, right? Because it's not about just showing up as you are.

It's about genuinely matching the situation, genuinely believing how you show up and you have to know yourself to be able to do that match, to be able to, um, either get support with actual coaching or even coach yourself, like walk yourself through the reflection that you need and the internal mindset working to do so that you can genuinely show up.

In the way that you want to. Right. And I'm not saying this is easy. This is not meant to be like, oh, well I'll just snap your fingers and you can do this right. It takes work. And, and, uh, yeah, so again, shameless, Sam was blind for my mastermind. If you want to join, that would be awesome to have you.

Uh, the mid day ambition.com/mastermind. But again, you do not have to join my mastermind. Um, I do fundamentally believe in group programs for this. I believe they're, I've seen so much of value and benefit from all walks of life. So I've done group programs with people. From all from lots of different situations in different places. And it's always the same people learn from each other. They.

We reflected it's in a group is in a safe group environment. Oh like a circle, even though, even when it's virtual, it's still has that circle feeling. Of connection of support of encouragement. So I cannot recommend highly enough finding a group environment for this. Doesn't have to be mind at all. If you have, if you have another avenue to get a group environment, highly recommend.

Even if you don't have access to that. Working with a coach, a one-on-one coach, um, talking to a trusted mentor, talking to a peer, talking to a friend, uh, like I said, if you really have a deep level of trust in your team, perhaps this could be a conversation, but I really would caution because these, these topics are very personal and they're very deep.

And so you want to be very, very careful before bringing it to a team conversation dynamic. Much more, um, much wiser to start the conversation. With a peer with, with one of your leaders, with a mentor, with a, with a friend. In the, in a different environment where you may not hold that same power dynamic.

So with that, those are some thoughts. I have an authenticity. I would love to hear from you hear what ideas you have. Did this get your ideas going? Um, is, is it generating new ideas that you want to hear being here? Being. Hear discussed on this podcast. Reach out to me. If you're on my email list, you can reply to any of my emails. You can check out the show notes for other ways to get in touch with me.

If this is giving you ideas of things you would like to hear on a podcast. I do have that ideas page that the mentor. vishen.com/ideas. And of Gore's shameless plug number 457. If you're interested in joining the mastermind, basically how it works is it's a small group of peers. It's no more than six people typically minimum before.

Um, sometimes I even go down to three, but typically minimum of force, a four to six people, and we have these kinds of discussions. We have these rich conversations and we grow leadership. And when we think about this, we get to know each other. We get to know ourselves and it's that supportive environment.

Um, so if you're interested in that the mint ambition.com/mastermind. And with that, have yourself a wonderful rest of the week. I hope you enjoyed. This, uh, impromptu bonus episode, have a good one.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now, before you go, make sure you click to follow the show this way you don't have to go looking for the latest episode. I'll come to you. Just click the plus button or the follow, and you'll get the latest episode fresh off the press. Thanks again. And remember that you are amazing. Now, get out there and RISE.