Stop Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Real authenticity isn't showing everything, it's knowing what to show.

I’ve had more than a couple of conversations recently with leaders attempting to navigate this “tricky” space of wanting to respect people's authentic self-expression while also needing them to do what is required of them at work.

It’s shown up in comments and questions like:

“I want to build trust, but what am I supposed to do with the direct report who is constantly in my office spilling their guts? It’s exhausting.”

Or

“We support people being authentic at our workplace, and it’s a stated value, so how am I supposed to have the conversation about spaghetti strap tank tops and ripped jeans not necessarily representing our professional standards when facing clients? Do I just not go there even though everyone knows it isn’t the right fit?”

And

“Recently, a leader who reports to me had a completely inappropriate emotional outburst at work. She’ll say she was being authentic, but the team was left shell-shocked and now they’re all walking on eggshells. So do I just allow her right to authenticity to be damaging to other people’s ability to feel safe at work?”

The dilemma for leaders is real. These are all situations that are icky, and make me want to grit my teeth, but I know these leaders aren’t alone in what they’re experiencing at work.

So how did we get here?

And what does authenticity actually need to become if it’s going to help contribute to a better workplace community?

Authenticity at work went way too far

I want to be clear - “bring your whole self to work” was a correction for something very real. For the longest time, many people felt like they had to mask up and leave large parts of themselves at the door, and were managing how much of their identity was really safe to show. Telling those people that they didn’t need to do that was a genuine gift.

But it’s a case of the fix for one problem becoming the cause of another. What led free people to stop hiding also inadvertently gave others the permission to stop filtering altogether, and turn their backs on professional standards that are also essential to stitching our workplaces together.

Then pop psychology inflated the trend into something that felt like an expression of pure freedom, speaking to our individual needs to be in control and feel valued. We took this new face of empowerment, and we went all in.

Yet we’re not just a bunch of disconnected individuals living next to each other. We’re social beings, and at work, we’re charged with working alongside one another. In this setting, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to each other. We used to call meeting that responsibility character - doing what’s right even when it’s hard - and saw that as something to actually aspire to.

Authenticity itself isn’t the problem. It’s just that the authenticity we need is a demanding character-based virtue. What we’ve been sold is a flattering knockoff that is easy-peasy because it doesn’t ask anything of us. Its motto is - just show up as you feel, whatever that is.

We need a shot of “other-centeredness” to help balance out the overly “me-centered” authenticity we currently have. It is no surprise this is where it has currently landed, as it’s absolutely in lockstep with the current cultural moment.

We’ve been encouraged to take this individual focus through the self-help movement for decades now, and if you’re in the USA like me, it’s not hard to see that we live in a very individualistic society.

It’s woven into most of our psychological models, which tend to put the self right at the center. Authenticity is the modern face of self-actualization - a concept wrapped around realizing our full potential, personal growth, and self-directed authentic expression - which sat at the pinnacle of Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, where he framed it as the ultimate aim of human psychological development. “Bring your whole self to work” is simply this concept dressed up for the office.

But late in life, Maslow himself acknowledged that he had stopped short of human potential, recognizing that self-actualization, because it was only ever about the self, was utterly incomplete. He added the concept of self-transcendence - the idea of turning your energy outside of yourself and focusing it toward others - and realized it was an essential next step, sitting higher than the individualized approach on the path to becoming truly fulfilled.

And it is true. We can look around us and see that those who are perhaps the most human are those who don’t focus obsessively on themselves, but live a life exquisitely devoted to the greater whole.

Tragically, the textbooks never updated his model. And it’s clear that the workplace has yet to get a useful updated memo, too. Instead, we’ve taken self-actualization, added a good dose of authenticity-buzz, and dressed it up as “bring your whole self to work”, wrapping our culture and leadership philosophy all around it.

As can be predicted with most fads, we’re now at the extreme end of this trend and are seeing all the ways it isn’t working. “Bring your whole self to work” tells people to turn the lens inward and to make their own self-expression the central element.

What we need is to focus that lens more on others, beyond ourselves, and on our shared commitment to each other. Or in the case of work, toward being a thoughtful contributor to a greater whole, whether that is to the task at hand, our team, or our organization.

And here’s the thing - the individuals who are over-authenticating and overexpressing themselves at work aren’t to blame. This is the very narrative that has been encouraged for the last several decades. They’ve been given a permission slip. Because we’re the ones who jumped on the bandwagon, listened to a bunch of leadership gurus, took authenticity and self-actualization, and have effectively built a workplace religion around it. We did that together. But the thinking was incomplete. We have ignored that Maslow himself spent the end of his life saying he got the top of the pyramid wrong. We just need an idea reset.

The Diamond Metaphor

So how do we bring authentic self-expression back into lockstep with what it means to be professional, collegial, and considerate of those who work with and alongside us?

When I was trying to explain to an executive coaching client a couple of years back how we can be authentic without showing every part of ourselves, I landed on the metaphor of a diamond, and I've continued to find it helps illustrate my thoughts. We can be authentic without necessarily having to show every part of ourselves, but by instead finding the part of ourselves that meets the moment just right and bringing it forth.

A traditionally cut diamond has many facets, and depending on where the light hits, that area will reflect light and “shine”. We, too, are like diamonds. We are made of many parts, and we can consciously choose which parts of ourselves we bring forward to face the light, and which parts are better left in the background, so we can best meet the moment.

So if self-transcendence tells us that our focus should also be on what is outside of us, the diamond is how we direct our light. This is what thoughtful, character-based authenticity looks like. It allows us to be both real, and considered.

For example, I’m naturally shy, but there is a part of me that is a performer at heart. If I were to walk into a workshop and let the shy part of me lead, I would do a terrible job. That is a space where I need to hold a room, and so I need to dig deep and find the part of me that is a performer. She is in there; there is still me, but I do have to consciously bring that part forward. It is a facet of myself I have to bring into the light. Default-me would be shy. But performer-me is not a role I play, but an authentic part of me I can bring forward when I need to.

And this is useful authenticity. We all have parts of ourselves, and not every part needs to be shown at every point in time.

Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash

The Reframe

It’s bigger than the unhelpful behaviors we’re currently seeing in the workplace. The very concept of authenticity and the way it has been sold is actually the problem. We’ve drifted culturally toward a me-centered version of the concept, and we need to shift it toward a me-and-others-centered, balanced expression. Authenticity at work needs to be redefined. From self-actualization-focused to self-transcendent-focused.

We can value authenticity, and value professionalism and care for others. We can still be authentic and real, while also considering the impact our behavior has on others. They do not have to be mutually exclusive.

We need to rebrand authenticity so we all understand it is about bringing out the right parts of ourselves to meet the responsibilities of the moment.

Famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl pointed us toward this self-transcendent approach decades ago. His reframe was to flip the question we ask from “What do I want from life?” to “What is life asking of me?"

We can do the same. At work, we can ask not, “How do I feel like expressing myself?” but rather, “What is this moment asking of me now?”

Our professional self should be the one coming to work, not necessarily our whole self. And leaning into our professional selves doesn’t mean we have to mask up; it just means we should be considerate about which parts of ourselves we’re bringing forth and ask ourselves whether they are the most effective for adequately responding to what the moment is asking of us, ensuring that they respect the freedoms and take care of others too.

Spilling our guts is a great match for a therapy session.

Sharing our thoughts, concerns, and maybe even frustrations, while also looking for solutions, is a better match for a discussion with our leader.

Ripped jeans are a good fit for a weekend with friends, but polished clothing is a better match for client-facing work when we’re representing a professional brand.

Leaders shouldn’t be afraid of clearly and explicitly redefining what authenticity looks like at work. We can’t expect our people simply to know when our cultural discussion has been so one-eyed (or self-focused) for so long.

But people are adaptive, and they will relearn and refocus if they know what is expected of them, and can see that they don’t have to give up being real and true in order to also be considerate of those they work alongside and of what the environment requires of them.

The simple message is that we need to recognize in ourselves, and highlight to our teams, that we can discern and choose which parts of ourselves to bring onto center stage at any given time.

You can still be real, but you should also be considerate. So maybe it’s time for us to stop encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work, and instead bring the parts of us that the moment actually needs.