Bringing your authentic self to work
What are we to make of the invitation to bring our authentic selves to work, or to lead authentically, an encouragement which often involves being open and honest, vulnerable even? As with other discourses in management, we are justified in asking just how authentic the appeal to authenticity really is, and what it might mean in practice. If the invitation to become authentic becomes ubiquitous and an obligation, then this is a development which is worth thinking about and problematising.
In previous posts I have explored how contemporary organisational life is highly likely to be governed by abstractions, such as performance targets and metrics. In addition, and in parallel, the financialisation of organisations privileges quantities over qualities, which is likely to reduce the potential for exercising practical judgement, by which I mean making judgements according to experience where we recognise ourselves and each other more fully in our work. I have explored in previous posts how organisations are intensely political places which involve the negotiation of power relationships. The first two phenomena are highly likely to make organisations feel like less humane places to be, and the third characteristic implies that to act (politically) involves a calculation of risk.
It may be that these constraints render organisations quite difficult places to be, and have provoked and shaped the discourse on authenticity as a counter movement in thinking.
Being authentic, meaning conforming to the original features; not false or imitation; or being true to your personality or character, has been a preoccupation of philosophers for hundreds of years. But if we assume that we are interdependent, the invitation has to turn on the paradox of the individual and the group. How might we flourish as individuals, but acknowledge our obligations to others? For example, Aristotle was interested in how we become fully ourselves by taking our relationship with the community into account.
In our increasingly individualised world, however, following a radically subjective movement in thinking, the preoccupation has been mostly about one side of the relationship, the individual. As with many big ideas like happiness, or even leadership, it has proved far easier to define what authenticity isn’t than what it is. So, for example, being authentic does not mean conforming unthinkingly with what everyone else is doing, or doing something because you think you will be liked as a consequence, or coasting along in your life to get by.
In general, when the idea of authenticity is mobilised in contemporary management discourse it is meant to indicate an ‘inner’ authentic and true self, which one can discover through introspection, intuition and listening to one’s ‘inner voice’. It is a self which is already there, which just needs to be found and made manifest.
We are invited to bring our authentic self to work, or leaders may be encouraged to lead authentically. The point of doing so is often instrumental: to become authentic for greater organisational productivity. If we aren’t authentic, we won’t be fully engaged, the organisation may fail to thrive then productivity will suffer. The idea of authenticity is tightly coupled to organisational performance, which is a development which should concern us.
The authentic leadership discourse is variously interpreted, but I deal here with one manifestation which depends on four individual qualities: awareness of self through self-scrutiny; relational transparency; balanced processing and an internalized moral perspective. Each of the qualities has something to recommend it in the abstract, although no more so than any other edifying injunction to live one’s life well. It is usually understood individualistically. For example, awareness of self is certainly an important quality. Socrates told us that a life unexamined is not worth living. However, whether one can usefully do this from self-scrutiny, or feedback questionnaires is another question. Moments of self-revelation often arise in a group, and can be both unexpected and provoke feelings of shame and vulnerability. It involves a radical encounter of the self through other selves, and is often an uncomfortable process which destabilises identity.
The second quality, relational transparency, i.e. the injunction openly to share one’s thoughts and beliefs, is both helpful and unhelpful. When might one do this, and to what degree? Whatever one thinks leadership is, it aims at the productive exercise of power, which is always relational. So when to disclose, how and how much to be transparent, is at the heart of the exercise of a leader’s practical judgement, which has both ethical and political implications.
Balanced processing, the idea that a leader should take many points of view into consideration and treat them all fairly is in theory a wonderful thing. It requires moral imagination and an ability to decentre the self, what has been described as the ability to widen our circle of concern. However, and in my experience, organisations are increasingly intolerant places of alternative points of view. To express difference too often brings with it political repercussions. As an example, in my home town it was decided that cancer screening services would be contracted out to a private company. When local NHS managers and staff protested they were threatened with legal action by NHS England for defamation. Challenging management in public increasingly comes freighted with risk. There is often a cost to revealing what you really think, and the risk is exclusion. This is not an argument against revealing what you really think, but is a reminder of what’s at stake. The example I give is not one which portrays an organisation thriving on the sharing of vulnerabilities and authentic selves.
And finally, there is an internalized moral perspective, which is predominantly positive, to encourage trust and openness in others. The idea is that being clear about one’s own moral position leaves one less open to being swayed by the herd. Perhaps this last injunction comes closest to the original understanding of authenticity, concerning the need not to be conform to unthinking opinion: to know your own mind. A perceptive reader might question whether this last recommendation works against the last one. What would be the point of taking many points of view into consideration and treating them fairly if you were unwilling to change your mind in the light of what you had heard?
The problem with the idea of authenticity in the conventional management discourse is that circles around in a solipsistic loop of the autonomous, self-cognising individual. It doesn’t define itself in relation to anything except a sense of self which already there. In contrast, a relational alternative would be to consider the idea of a fluid self, emerging in attempts to co-ordinate action with other fluid but interdependent selves. Authenticity here becomes the paradoxical ability to find oneself with and through others, choosing between multiple sets of responsibilities while negotiating joint action. This is not a denial of individuality and authenticity, but is a description of how individuality emerges. It is through the activity of dynamically sustaining membership of multiple groups as we navigate how to go on together, to become the fullest expression of ourselves. In this sense, authenticity is made, rather than discovered, it emerges in group process, rather than being a property of a unique individual leader.
