16
HR
West
B
efore you answer that question, let
us first consider identity. Our social
identities are built of many different things.
Where you grew up and how you were raised
are big components. Your experiences, values,
and aspirations also contribute, as do race, age,
ethnicity, gender, physical appearance, education,
and profession. Each of us has a unique identity, a
one-of-a-kind mash-up of all these different things
laid over top of our genetic hand-me-downs.
And these identities are not carved from stone; they
are fluid and dynamic. We change, learn, and evolve
(hopefully) as we move through life. We also show
up different in different situations and relationships.
I am a little bit different around my daughters than I
am around my wife. I am different with my wife than
I am with my mother. We choose to share or not
share the many different parts of ourselves in each of
our relationships and interactions. Even if nearly all of
this happens without any premeditation on our part,
it remains true that we present different versions of
ourselves in different settings.
> So, my original
question is vaild.
Who are you at work?
I don’t accuse you of going to work and pretending to
be somebody else. I’m simply suggesting that maybe
only a fraction of your real self makes it to your desk.
There is much that we keep to ourselves, parts and
pieces of our identities we fear can make us vulnerable,
like our true feelings, our weirdness, our untested
and unproven ideas and hunches, our hopes and
aspirations, our big questions, our big fears.
These personal qualities, which are natural and
human, each generate some social friction when
exposed. They make us stick out. They draw
unwanted judgments and critiques. To reduce this
friction, to reduce the risk of being the oddball, we
keep that stuff to ourselves. We bite our tongues,
and we play smaller than we actually are.
We may all still accomplish a lot with fractions of
ourselves, but the result is that we end up with
truncated identities at work, and the benefit our
organizations receive from our contributions is
truncated, as well. It is hard to build real relationships
and a real body of work on less than real identities.
It might sound like this is going to get touchy-
feely, but that is not my intent. This is a question
of authenticity, allowing people be who they are, to
fly their freak flags high. It is also about the genesis
of leadership, creativity, and innovation in your
organization. It isn’t a touchy-feely, happy-shiny,
intellectual endeavor. Authenticity is the foundation
upon which we build our work.
Unfortunately, “authenticity” is one of
those words
,
a righteous concept that somewhere along the
way got turned into a buzzword. We throw the
word around very casually as if it were a simple,
safe, and common thing, but in my experience, it
is not. Authenticity is the quality of being authentic,
genuine, or real, and I would suggest that it is rare
in the workplace.
While we talk a good game about keeping it real,
marching to the beat of our own drums, and being
rugged individuals, we do not do much to risk
standing out. We dress like the folks around us,
we sit in the same place for our weekly or monthly
meetings in the same conference room, and we nod
our heads through the same anemic conversations.
We do not disagree much. We play small.
The world is in transition. How we organize work is
changing. How we communicate is changing. How
we build and manage organizations is changing.
The very concept of community is changing. Also
changing are the raw materials that we use to create
value. More and more, value is derived from the
intangible assets that our employees and members
carry in their hearts and minds, things like creativity,
curiosity, and social capital.
In this new environment, a robust exchange of
ideas and perspectives will feed more aggressive
inquiry on the way to making sound decisions,
and it will give you the ability to recombine and
synthesize toward generating creative solutions
and innovation. But we can only do this if people
are allowed to be honest.
So, we need more whole human beings with
weird ideas, crazy questions, and absurd hopes.
We need more of ourselves in our work. We need
more authenticity.
BEING
REAL
AT WORK
By Keynote Speaker, Joe Gerstandt
Keynote Speaker
I have a question for you:Who are you at work? Do you fake it? Silly questions,
for sure. Here’s another one: Are you the real you at work? Of course you are,
right? After all, who else would you be?
