Connect with authenticity

- Early in my executive career, I didn't realize how important authenticity was for great management. My team's performance was struggling and the more I tried to act like how I thought an executive was supposed to act, the worse things seemed to get. The CEO saw my troubles and explained it to me. You're not a jerk in real life, but you're playing one. Be authentic with your team and things will change. She backed up the advice with an opportunity to spend a weekend golfing and hanging out with some of the remote team members I hadn't met in person. Less than an hour into the weekend, one of the team members I was struggling with looked at me and said, "Wow, you're not half the jerk I thought you were." And she didn't use the word jerk. I'm being polite for the camera. This moment was the beginning of my love affair with leadership and a huge lesson for me. Business is about connecting with people, not about numbers, and authenticity is the only way to create a real connection. With this in mind, I'm excited to share some tips for how you can leverage authenticity to build strong, genuine relationships with your team and colleagues. The simple rule of authenticity is this, be yourself. The worst thing you can do as a manager is put on a facade or front that hides the real you. Your team will intuitively know you're being fake and they won't be receptive to it. In fact, the message they're most likely to take from it is that you don't care about them as people. Additionally, if your team somehow fails to realize you're being inauthentic, they'll connect with a version of you that doesn't actually exist. This can become even more detrimental to building a relationship with your team. So be yourself. Sure, use some discretion. If you'd normally treat yourself to an expletive filled tantrum over a missed deadline if you weren't in the office, I'm not recommending you do that at work. But pretending you're not at all frustrated in that moment isn't authentic either. Find an acceptable middle ground that's based on your truth, and maybe consider working on your EQ a bit. Finally, it's okay to share a bit of yourself with your team and to invite them to do the same. You're much more likely to build deep, authentic relationships talking about your kids or your favorite sports team then you will pouring over a spreadsheet deliverable. If you think these kinds of personal conversations are a distraction, they're not. Everyone has experienced a robo-boss or colleague that lives exclusively in the numbers side of the business and doesn't bother connecting. Failing to be authentic isn't just a recipe for poor results, it's a recipe for misery. Authenticity is your opportunity to make the day-to-day experience of work more comfortable, safe, and fun. Doing so doesn't only benefit you, but everyone you interact with. So the next time you're getting ready to say what you think you should, but not what you want to, try a different approach and speak your truth.