The benefits and risks of ‘being yourself’ at work

Open communication and a greater understanding of professional boundaries, at all employment levels, is crucial to fostering a psychologically safe workplace.

This was one of the key messages from a panel of thought-leaders addressing the topic of ‘the benefits of being authentic at work’ on the first day of the FW Leadership Summit 2024.

“I think it’s about creating psychological safety. So people can bring more of their authentic self to work,” Kim Lehmann, a clinical psychologist, said. 

“There’s a whole bunch of reasons why we want that and it’s associated with success that’s associated with high performing teams. So I think when people feel they can be authentic, they can ask more questions, admit to more mistakes and be more creative. They don’t have that cognitive load of trying to filter all the time and mask. So as a leader, it’s, I think, much easier to create that workspace when you yourself are authentic.”

Ruveni Kelleher, a leading employment lawyer with Johnson Winter Slattery, agreed.

“It’s really about creating a safe space where people can be themselves and feel safe and heard and where you can really show how much you value and appreciate them for their individual contribution,” Kelleher said.

“And that really does, for me, create the sense of belonging that I hope all my team members have.”

She said achieving a safe work environment means following specific measures around vulnerability, taking accountability and normalising making mistakes.

“So having open and transparent conversations and being available to discuss those sorts of things is probably one of my primary tools,” she said. 

“My second is inviting feedback. You know, on a general basis, I think it’s really important to ask people how they’re going not to make assumptions, but then also to be actively listening and being empathetic when you listen to those and take on that feedback and provide feedback.

“Thirdly, I focus on autonomy so people can learn from their own mistakes, take responsibility for their work, learn from their own mistakes, solve their own problems, I think that’s really important.”

Fellow panellist, Dr Lisa Pryor, also agreed while discussing the merit of incorporating boundaries at work.

“Sometimes that might mean boundaries around some of those conversations, I think, to make people feel safe.”

“I think it’s interesting thinking about what it is that creates a psychologically safe workplace,” Pryor, a psychiatrist, said. 

“I think it’s tricky because  it’s important for people to bring aspects of themselves to work. But then again, there’s also that concept that ‘good fences make good neighbours’ and I think we’re going to have genuinely diverse workplaces, we have to recognise that people are going to have genuine differences of opinion, different political views.” 

She said if there are genuinely different views in the workplace, it’s important to find a way for people to coexist.

“Sometimes that might mean boundaries around some of those conversations, I think, to make people feel safe,” she said.

“When we talk about that we should be able to bring our personal lives into the workplace, I think of an example, like an ethical issue, say in medicine, what about, say, someone who works in general practice who has very strong religious views against contraception, it’s probably very important to have limits on how much you bring that view into the workplace. And the idea of everyone bringing their personal views to work might actually be quite problematic.”

“So for me, thinking about leadership and thinking about stories and people that I work with is always about intersectionality.”

Winnie Dunn, the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, shared her thoughts by discussing intersectionality in the workplace.

“In terms of leadership, culturally, I take my lessons from my elders and so I think really to understand where the basis of workplaces start is the African American lawyer and feminist Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality,” Dunn, a Tongan-Australian writer and editor, said. 

“So whether you personally believe otherwise, it’s impossible to separate the personal from the political or the personal from the work, because work is where a majority of adults spend their life. 

“So for me, thinking about leadership and thinking about stories and people that I work with is always about intersectionality.”

The panel discussion then moved to the topic of how ‘authentic’ employees should be when sharing personal details with their employer.

“If we’re talking about mental health and mental illness, I think it really depends on what the problem is. There are some conditions where it’s really important that people receive sick leave accommodations, perhaps even time in hospital,” Pryor said.

“There are other mental health conditions where it’s actually really important that people return to work…so I think it really depends on the problem.”

Kelleher said it is key to share information with your employer without stepping over into oversharing.

“I think it’s really important to be saying to your boss, ‘I have some health issues, but I don’t want that to get in the way of any opportunities that are available to me’, rather than they’re not talking to you, but noticing you’ve had a lot of sick leave and thinking that they want to lighten your load and not give you opportunities,” she said. 

“I think if you’re able to take them on, you should be expressing it, if you’re uncomfortable, with a general description of what’s going on in your life.”

Lehmann offered a more sobering view.

“So for me, I think if being at work and being authentic is about feeling connected and accepted by your colleagues. And you can’t do that and you can’t be authentic and you can’t share, you’re constantly filtering and you have that masking that’s a huge cognitive load then detracts from how much you can do your job,” she said. 

“Some of us are lucky and work in places where there are high levels of psychological safety. If you don’t, and your values are really different from your employer, I would suggest that you probably need to start looking for somewhere else, that’s going to be more aligned.”