How to be what your team needs and still be yourself.

If you’re a living, breathing human you’ve probably told someone, “Just be yourself!” We throw it around a lot, often with little meaning behind it. How do you navigate “be yourself” in the workplace? Is it possible to be 100 percent authentic when you’re hiring, firing, and interacting with a variety of personalities every day? Not really. You can get pretty darn close, though, by following my unique approach.

For 20+ years I’ve been talking to people in management about how to aim for authenticity. Beyourself, and also the chameleon your team needs you to be to build trust and a healthy work environment. Authenticity creates a leader that people follow. The chameleon part comes from a place of sincerity, free of pretense or deceit, and with the best intentions for the organization.

My favorite part about being a Vistage Chair is that we treat the CEO as a human being and not as an object owned by the company. I love the fact that when we coach we encourage our members to open up about personal thoughts. We want them to feel as if they are more than a moneymaker for a company. This is one reason I connected with Vistage and probably why I connect so well with my clients. Some of them have never felt their value beyond their career. I like to break it down as, “Hey, you’re a CEO, but you’re also human.” What a novel concept!

Here’s an example of the power that comes from being yourself at work. When one of my Vistage member’s companies was acquired, the new ownership left her in place as the CEO of that location – a large, couple hundred million dollar organization. After the buyout, she understandably had some trouble adjusting to the fact new ownership wanted things done in a different way. Instead of doing what she knew how to do, she tried to be what she thought they wanted her to be in order to roll with the changes. It felt disingenuous because it was so outside her natural character.

She started to subconsciously share her dissatisfaction with the new ownership with others through her speaking tone and body language. The negativity was running downhill, but she had no idea she was doing it. I picked up on that in our monthly one-to-one conversations and told her, “Stop being somebody that you’re not and go back to what you did when you were so successful,before the acquisition. Go back to being yourself.” It was just in time. She was thinking about quitting and retiring 10 years earlier than planned. She took my advice and went back to her own management style. In a surprising twist, this action revealed a problem with someone up the ranks, and he was let go. His replacement is amazing and she is very happy with her new and improved work environment. And, by the way, the bottom line is improving too. 

That leads me to karma, karma, karma, karma corporate chameleon – sung in the tune of Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.” Hopefully you won’t come and go with these pointers to help you remain as true to yourself as possible in the workplace:

• Increase your self-awareness. I’ve been a DiSC facilitator and teacher for 20 years. It’s a behavior assessment tool based on the DiSC theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston, which centers on four different personality traits that are currently dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. I’ve learned so much about accepting your style and modifying it to be what your team needs you to be in the moment. You don’t try to change who you are, but you adjust your communication style to others.
• Find your people. We’re all human and even CEOs need a place to let their hair down and be imperfect. Professionally facilitated peer groups are the perfect forum to workshop your authenticity – relationships, conversations, ideas – without fear of judgment or retaliation. As a Vistage Chair, it’s my privilege to see this in action. I love the moments when I hear someone address another member across the room “here is how you fix that, here is something to look at, or here is a question to ask.”
• Find someone to talk to. It’s lonely at the top. If you find a great coach, you may find insights that help you in all aspects of your life.