Seducing Authenticity

Heart And Hustle
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

I have spent most of my life, personally and professionally, seducing people into being authentic with me. I am acutely aware of how this statement sounds in conversation. Instantly, an individual’s guard goes up and yet… they can’t seem to resist wanting to know more. Welcome to my version of a double bind!

Craving realness for as long as I can remember, I strive to create environments where a person wants to share their truest self. Hence, it made perfect sense that I became a therapist. My love of all things emotionally complicated, I can’t help but want to unlock a person. The beautiful side effect of all this is that once a person feels free-er to be their authentic selves they begin to radically shift towards reaching their goals.

Jump cut to 2 years ago, when I moved from a being in private practice into heading up the HR department for a startup tech company. I began with lofty psychological desires for the few employees that started before me. All of that hubris was quickly humbled by two parts of reality. First was, I had to work within someone else’s framework and the other was that I had no idea what I was doing.

By most accounts, what I have done to build and foster a work place that is committed to supporting each employee, as a real person, has worked. But, I couldn’t shake the notion that I didn’t know how to replicate that at scale. I kept hiring and supporting these seriously talented individuals that embraced my unorthodox approach to prioritizing vulnerability, empathy, and connection in a business setting.

I began to suffer from a high-quality problem: the company was getting too big!

Watching employees politely pass each other in the hall but never interact beyond what might be needed for a project was killing me. When employees would tell me that they didn’t know anything but the name of the new person, I internally cringed. I had to do something.

So, last week I did a pattern interrupt and began what I am calling my Heart and Hustle initiative. Every week, I am putting together four co-workers that typically don’t have reason to communicate and asking them questions that facilitate openness. I am also doing a one on one discussion with every employee every month with the expressed purpose of wanting to get to know them beyond our normal check-ins. Finally, I am asking each employee who currently they would most like to get to know in the company and connecting those individuals.

The data of these changes is pouring in. The early results are beyond what I could have hoped for in such a short time. So much, that I feel like I need to keep some sort of record of what I am doing. I want to look at the micro and macro implications and pivot as needed. Documenting my journey along the way is both scary and exhilarating… which seems fitting for someone that holds the authentic seduction of self as a key component of taking positive action.

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Heart And Hustle

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Documenting my HR journey within a startup…

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