How To Grow Authentically
When you try to be less aggressive or more vocal, are you being less authentic? Don't mistake growing your skills for giving up your values.
(“Summer Nights in the Yard”, Teddy the Corgi, Bay Area, California)
Client: If I try to be more vocal or talk about my accomplishments, is that being inauthentic? What about dressing more like the executives or trying to learn financial lingo? How do I strive to grow as a person (changing who you are), and be authentic (staying true to who you are)?
Authenticity has become an important cultural value and leadership trait in recent years. Employees are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work, and leaders are asked to role model authentic leadership, showing up as they are, and not putting on a different persona at work. People want to see leaders show vulnerability, tell personal stories, and proudly celebrate their heritage. At the same time, becoming an executive often means learning new soft skills that you may not possess, building relationships with a diverse set of people, and trying out new approaches to problems. Is that being inauthentic?
Most of us intuitively respond “no”, but maybe yes? To help us parse through this seeming contradiction, let’s dive into some examples together. (Another good rule of thumb: if something feels intuitively wrong but maybe also right, it means you’re likely not getting specific enough.)
Example 1: An aspiring executive has an East Asian accent when speaking English. She is also soft-spoken, making it difficult for her to be as effective as she can be in group discussions. She is encouraged to work on softening her accent and speaking more slowly and loudly.
Does speaking English without an accent make you less authentic? I believe learning a new language well is about gaining a new skill. It is the same as learning to play basketball or cooking a new dish. Many components of executive presence fall in the same group of developing a new skill — to speak more confidently, eloquently, or to use gestures. In contrast, when it comes to being authentic, it is more about staying true to your values, which make up the core of who you are. Gaining these new skills does not change who you are and your values. Therefore, it does not make you less authentic.
Example 2: An aspiring executive is reserved and dislikes speaking about himself. He was brought up in a culture that values humility and hard work. As a result, many of his contributions and impact go unnoticed or credited to others. He is encouraged to speak up more for his work and impact so that it is properly acknowledged.
This aspiring executive values humility and speaking about his work feels like bragging. There is seemingly a clash between one of his values and the action he needs to take. The question becomes: is there a way to bring awareness to one’s work without bragging?
Bragging stems from excessive pride and often involves comparing oneself to others or superfluous statements that border on lying. Bringing visibility to one’s accomplishments does not necessitate bragging. There are ways to bring attention to one’s accomplishments while being in service to others. Perhaps you’re sharing a learning from a project that went well. Perhaps you’re creating a celebratory moment in a turbulent environment. Finding creative ways to accomplish a goal without compromising one’s values is a key trait in leadership. It’s situations like these where copying what others do is inauthentic and instead, you need to trod your own unique (and authentic) path.
Example 3: An aspiring female executive is passionate and direct about her work. She is assertive about her ideas and confident in her team’s capabilities. She got feedback that some of her colleagues find her aggressive or intimidating, and is asked to adjust her leadership style to better accommodate others.
Here we see two values at play: passion and kindness. The individual is passionate about her work, yet her passion comes off as aggressive to others. She cannot control how others react toward her, but she can be considerate of their feelings, and manage her reaction to their reaction. She may choose to dial down her passion and dial up her kindness when meeting with more junior members of the team. Or she may choose to spend time building relationships one-on-one so they get to know her and to understand her behavior as passion and not aggression. Authenticity is about staying true to one’s values — but at times those values are in conflict, and one must decide which to prioritize above the other.
From these examples, we can see that being authentic comes down to staying true to our values. Sometimes we mistake the need to develop a skill with the need to change our values. Sometimes we need to get off the beaten path to solve a difficult problem while staying true to our values. Sometimes our values can conflict with each other, forcing us to prioritize. In all these cases, we remain authentic leaders.
In my coaching, I’ve seen some clients use authenticity as a shield or excuse to avoid the discomfort of growth. In reality, most of us have just a handful of values that we hold close to our hearts (e.g. honesty, integrity, courage, kindness), and staying true to those is not difficult. Some of us also have certain unique aspects of our culture that we find important enough to consider a part of our identity (e.g. holidays, religious beliefs, etc). If you do come across a scenario where the path to executive leadership requires you to contradict one of your core values, it’s worth examining that scenario very closely and deciding whether the trade-off is worth it (hint: it often isn’t).
Humans are endlessly adaptable. I firmly believe that most leaders are made, not born. So, let’s ground ourselves in our core values, and then get out of our own way to build new skills, experiment with new ways of accomplishing goals, and growing our careers.
How do you consider authenticity vs growth? What does being authentic mean to you?