Yesterday in our mastermind group we talked about the importance of authenticity in your leadership and your life. The impacts of not being authentic can affect not only you, but it also impacts your family, your team and your workspace. You may even believe that you are being authentic all the time, but there are probably situations that you may show up differently to others and don’t realize it.
Can you think of any situations where you are doing this? Why do you feel like you can’t show up as yourself? One of the major reasons that this may occur is that you don’t feel safe enough to show up as your true self and share what you think with others. You are constantly trying to project this persona that others expect of you or that you tell yourself you need to be. The truth is that It takes so much of your energy to try to be what someone else thinks you should be. You must be just exhausted when you get home after work after putting on this “performance” all day.
When you are leading from an authentic place, people will naturally gravitate to you. They want to work with you or work for you and be on your team. They trust you and see that you are genuine. This type of leadership translates to sharing information with each other at a deeper level. Finding ways to connect with each other beyond a superficial level brings a team closer together and increases their performance to phenomenally higher rates. They stand for each other’s success and care about the group more than themselves.
Brene Brown says “the core of authenticity is the courage to be imperfect, to be vulnerable.” What stories are you telling yourself about the connections you have with people? Do you purposely hold yourself back and only share so much with them? Without realizing it, you may be missing out on letting people see what you are all about. You may be keeping yourself safe and building an invisible wall between yourself and other people. What if you change that by letting yourself be a little more vulnerable, so people can actually see the “real you?”