Authenticity at work – from buzzword to behaviour

Authenticity has become one of those words which has been used so often in a ‘trend’ way over a handful of recent years, that it’s started to lose it’s meaning. We’ve seen in appear more frequently in values statements, leadership programmes, social media snippets, and engagement surveys. Everyone is in favour of it, but I’d say that a substantial majority haven’t actually worked out what to do about beyond these trends.

Authenticity at work – how HR can move it from buzzword to behaviour

This is where HR comes in, and it’s a significant opportunity if the profession takes it on board.

The reality many organisations now find themselves in is one of having spent years, possibly even decades doing the opposite of building authenticity. This has been in the shape of training people to ‘read the room’ or ‘soften your approach;’ all things which lead to managing themselves in a way that’s more ‘palatable’ to the culture above them. The effect has been quietly corrosive though. People have learned to perform professionalism, rather than bring themselves to it. And now we seem to be surprised that they don’t feel safe enough to show up as who they actually are.

You can’t just put the word authenticity on a wall or include in your rehashed company values. It either exists in how the organisation actually operates, or it doesn’t exist at all. HR can move authenticity from language into practice.

The foundation is psychological safety, not policy. The reason most people don’t bring their whole selves to work isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they have learned through experience that doing so comes with risk. That could have been seeing a team member share an idea, and it was unduly dismissed, or when they saw vulnerability being shared and it being used against the person.

HR can’t legislate safety in existence. What they can do though is create the conditions where people experience it. This is though the way performance conversations are conducted, through who gets recognised and why. Through what happens when someone raises a difficult issue. Every process is a signal. These signals need to tell people that who they actually are is welcome.

Then, it means looking at what gets rewarded. In most organisations, the people who advance are the people who’ve learned to perform confidence, manage up effectively, and reflect the cultural norms back at leadership. That’s not authenticity though.

If HR want to genuinely embed authentic behaviour, it has to look at the criteria within the promotion decisions, performance frameworks, and succession conversations. Are they rewarding the people who challenge the room, or read it and adjust? The people who bring the honest picture or the comfortable one. The person who said the thing nobody else was wiling to say; did that count in their favour or go against them?

The answers in these questions tell you far more about your culture than your values statement does.

Authenticity requires leaders who model it first – and it’s contagious. People take their cues from the top. If a senior leader is one who carefully manages their image, filters everything through a performative lens of how it will land, and is never visibly uncertain, that is exactly what will become the cultural norm, regardless of what the people agenda says.

HR’s most powerful leverage here isn’t a programme. It’s working with senior leaders to help them, re-train them so they understand that the diluted and ‘managed’ version of themselves is costing the organisation. That they need to stop performing leadership, start practising it and then see the entire culture shift around them. To understand that being real isn’t ‘soft’, it’s the thing which builds the trust, retention, and innovation that every organisation is seeking.

Authenticity at work isn’t a wellbeing initiative. It’s a business imperative. The organisations that create genuine conditions for it will outperform the ones who still rely on carefully managed, performance optimised version of their people. In a world getting more data and automation enabled, real authenticity is the standout quality workplaces need to attract and retain the best talent.

HR do already know this; it’s a case of being willing to go first and pioneer it.

By Claire Brumby, who is a leadership coach, trainer, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author of Forget Normal – I Want Magic: The 5 Rules of Leadership, published by Kogan Page (out now)

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