Are you being your authentic self?

I was leading a presentation on authentic leadership when a participant stopped me in mid-sentence.

She told me that she didn’t believe in authenticity. Her evidence? People at work didn’t seem to accept her behavior.

After a little discussion we both realized that she had been using the cloak of authenticity as an internal excuse not to adapt to change. She had been putting up roadblocks to progress and expecting people to be OK with that.

That’s stubbornness, not authenticity.

Sometimes we confuse being authentic with a refusal to adjust or improve. We think authenticity means staying the way we’ve always been. It actually means being honest with ourselves about our strengths, potential, and what’s holding us back.

Authenticity is about remaining true to our values but flexible in our approach to demonstrating them.

It’s realizing that you can be fully authentic right now while also seeing a “future you” that is even more skilled, powerful, and influential. He or she is out there waiting for you to catch up to them.