How to be your authentic self at work

Authenticity, or being your true self at work has been catching on in corporate circles. Many employers are promoting this concept in their culture. While bringing your true self to work is a great idea on paper, it can be a mine-field if you are not careful enough.

Bringing your authentic or whole self to work means to not suppress your ideas, history, experiences and cultural background to blend in better within your organization, but to bring your unique perspective to the table for furthering the goal of the team. It has a lot of widely acknowledged benefits like higher morale, less burnout, more collaboration, more trust among colleagues and better team rapport. For a beginner, however, authenticity at work can be mystifying. How do you strike the perfect balance between being yourself and not coming across as crass and unprofessional? In a work place, where everyone is encouraged to be open and your colleagues keep talking about their personal experiences, it is easy to get confounded and lose confidence. Some people, not knowing what course to follow might become withdrawn at work, defeating the purpose altogether. How to navigate these uncharted waters? Here are a few pointers.

• Always share relevant information – Be it a personal anecdote to build rapport with your colleagues at a work meeting or excerpt from a book you read, if you are not sure if it is right to share that at work, think about the relevance of your story in context of the task at hand. Will it help your colleagues understand what you are trying to explain? Will it explain your thought process and your goals? If yes, go for it. If not, you might be better off sharing with your work friends over lunch out of the office.

• Be considerate of cultural differences – While working in diverse teams from different countries and cultures, you should research their culture beforehand to make sure how sharing personal stories at work is perceived in their culture. What Asian cultures consider oversharing is considered acceptable small talk for Americans.

• Test the waters – If you are unsure about how much and what kind of personal stories are acceptable, try sharing a little at first and pay attention to how it is received. Did it make your colleagues open up more towards you and more receptive of your ideas? Did it help you gain confidence before presenting a big idea? OR were your coworkers scandalized and started to avoid you? Pay attention to their non-verbal cues like body language. Did they change their posture to make themselves seem closed off? If it did, then you went too far.

• Read the room – Be mindful of your audience and stay away from stories or information that might offend someone in the room. For instance, Talking about a political or religious hot topic might be a turn-off for some who have been affected by it on a personal level. As a general rule, it is best to avoid talking about politics and religion at work.

• Be truthful – Do not take liberties with your personal anecdotes at work. Only share genuine and first hand information or stories. Do not make things up to look better in the eyes of your colleagues. Don’t share information that might appear to be self congratulating or can only be thought of as bragging.

• Avoid gossip at all costs – Another pitfall to avoid is spreading what you heard from another person in the office even if you know it to be true. It is never wise to share what you heard in a different meeting or otherwise learnt or overheard in the office. It can damage the reputation that you have worked hard to build, in an instant. Gossips are perceived to be deceitful even if the information you share is true. It is never a good look at work.

• Wisely pick the time and place of your revelations – Sharing a personal detail in the middle of an official meeting is never wise. But by all means, go ahead if you are trying to strike a rapport with a client in his office. The timing and the place determines what you should share. Even at the right place and time, do not prematurely share personal stories. That can affect your credibility or make you seem unprofessional.

• Work comes first – Personal stories and friendships at work should never take place of good old hard work and work ethic. No one hires you in an office for entertaining your colleagues. It is important to be a team player and establish your credibility as a solid worker first. If you are an honest and dependable worker and your colleagues trust you to always get the job done, they are going to be a lot more open and interested in you as a person, too.

• Know your best self – In order to present your best and most appropriate self at work, it is important to first explore your true self. One way to do that, in my experience is to read and learn from the masters. Try to find good books on the subject to broaden your mindset. One book I recommend on the subject – The Art of Authenticity by Karissa Thacker.