Work colleagues don't want to see your 'authentic self'

Of all the naff corporate concepts dressed up as liberation, authenticity is up there as the worst. So I'm not surprised to hear that even Nick Clegg can't take any more of it.

- SOPHIE HEAWOOD

The former deputy PM has revealed, in a speech at Wimbledon Bookfest, that when he arrived in California to work for Meta and Facebook, there were posters around the office saying “Bring your authentic self to work.”

So he announced to his “T-shirt wearing millennial” underlings: Please don’t. “Bring your inauthentic self to work. I’ll bring my inauthentic self to work from nine until five, then you can be as authentic as you like in the evenings, and we’ll all get on perfectly well.” And their reaction was, according to Clegg, “absolute stony silence”, even though he was speaking in a semi-joking manner that he thought worked well “in a rather British, House of Commons way”.

But obviously, he has a point. I don’t want to see your authentic self in the workplace - and I’m sure you don’t want to see mine.