Hiding In Plain Sight

Did you get the memo? It’s now acceptable—even encouraged—to be your true self on the job. But as four women’s stories show, combining the personal with the professional can be hard work.

- Sara Gaynes Levy

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg famously leaned into the mic at a Harvard Business School event and urged her audience of future MBAs to bring your “whole self” to work—the idea being that genuine interactions on the job make us more invested in our colleagues and therefore the work we do. The message spread like a LOLcat video, and since then, financial institutions and tech firms alike have touted their embrace of authenticity, urging current and future employees to get— and stay—real on the job. The new “come one, come to all” script for job listings (this one for a Walmart cybersecurity manager): “We welcome all types of talent where your story is included and you bring your whole self to work!”

So what exactly constitutes authenticity on the job? “In my case, it might look like this: I would really like to raise my hand in a meeting because I have something to say, and coming from me, a black Christian academic woman, it might be divergent from the other opinions being shared,” explains Tina Opie, PhD, an associate professor in the management division at Babson College. “But I do it anyway. It’s what I want to do internally, and it’s concordant with my external behavior.” Toon Taris, Ph.D., a professor of work and organizational psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, uses three metrics to evaluate whether employees feel authentic: “You’re able to engage in activities and behaviors that you personally find important and meaningful. You feel that your work fits well with your personal values, interests, and convictions—you don’t have to hide how you really feel. And you don’t need to put much effort into behaving the way others expect you to behave.”