Bringing Your Authentic Self To Work
I, personally, am a terrible actor. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I feel my feelings to the fullest extent, I love deeply, hurt wholly, and celebrate wildly. Hey, I’m human!
When I entered the workforce (admittedly not too long ago in my so-far very young career), pre-COVID, I was under the impression that I had to leave that part of me at the door when I started work. That’s what my parents did, that’s what people did on TV shows, that’s the idea I had in my head of how I should be. It felt easier to do back then, when I left home and walked into an office. Being in my early 20s, I didn’t really have that much to worry about in my personal life besides what I was making for dinner that night!
When COVID hit, this was a completely different story. There was no “home Ceri and work Ceri” anymore. My environment completely shifted into working from home. I no longer had a separate persona to shed and a new one to meet at the door. It was all me, all of the time, and I realised: I am a LOT.
Continuing my career, I really struggled with that—the expectation I had of myself to be a certain way at work, even though we’d all gone through a major trauma and didn't recognise the world anymore. I constantly felt like I was “too much,” and that there was no way to escape from the intensity that was my entire self.
After years of trying, struggling, and feeling judged for failing to be an “acceptable me,” I found out I was neurodiverse. The mask I’d been wearing all this time to be more presentable to society faded away over time, and I wasn't sure who this different "me" was underneath. I started to look at my career and myself differently. I focused on what I enjoyed, what made me feel energised, happy, and comfortable. I looked at what I actually wanted to do, not what masked-me thought was the right thing to do. I stopped hiding the parts of me I thought were repulsive and realised they were actually pretty helpful.
Bringing the real me to work meant that the people I worked with felt safe to do the same. Admitting when I made a mistake and how I felt about it meant my teams felt safe to come to me when they made a mistake, so we could fix it together.
If something awful was happening in my personal life, of course it was going to bleed into work—because we are human. We are living, breathing animals, not robots. If I was excited about something, I would show it, so my team and clients knew that when I showed interest in what they were doing, I really meant it. My whole self was on that project, and that is one heck of a team motivator!
I created a new expectation of myself in a workplace and career that encourages the real me, because the real me is pretty awesome at what I do when I have the freedom to do so!
As leaders, it’s not just our job to drive results; it’s our responsibility to create a culture where people feel safe enough to be real. The average person spends 40-50 years at work. Think about it—that’s a long time not being yourself.
When we foster environments of psychological safety, we invite authenticity, make room for vulnerability, and therefore, growth. That is how real connections are built, and people thrive. You deserve to be your real self, your full self, because if you’re too much for them, they deserve and can go find less.
Let’s be the leaders we know our colleagues deserve.