Who You Are Shows Up When It Counts
Will you be brave enough to use it in the moment?
We tend to think of authenticity as something we know about ourselves in advance.
We don’t. We discover it at the moments it costs us something.
Last week I said authenticity needs a customer. This week I want to go one step further. Knowing that authenticity matters is one thing. Knowing how it actually shows up, and what you need to draw on when it does, is something else entirely.
And here is something I have noticed that still surprises me. I know when I am not aligned with who I am more reliably than when I am. Because misalignment doesn’t sit well. It has a feeling. And that feeling, it turns out, is one of the most useful signals a leader has.
The talent review table
Many years ago I sat in a talent meeting reviewing colleagues for performance. A group of leaders were building a case to exit someone from the business. The picture being painted wasn’t positive. My peers around the room were nodding along.
As it happened I had a quite different view. This person didn’t work for me but I had seen something different, not the behaviours being discussed. It would have been easy, even convenient, to stay quiet and let the decision take its course.
But that wasn’t me. I couldn’t.
So I spoke up. Offered examples to the contrary. The debate resumed. Sadly, after much discussion, the exit was progressed. I wasn’t successful. But I had spoken up, reasoned, stood my ground against the consensus. I left knowing I had at least tried.
Not challenging didn’t seem right nor fair. And fairness is a core value of mine. I feel it most sharply when it’s absent.
Not fighting for people because it’s inconvenient is also not the kind of leadership I want to role model.
It was one of those grey moments. Where ethical or moral lines get close to being crossed. Where staying silent or toeing the line would be easier, and the person, or customer, most affected is not at the heart of the consideration. The comfortable route and the right route are seldom the same thing.
These are the moments I started to understand what bringing my whole self to work actually meant in practice. Moments of alignment between who you are and what you do about it. Beliefs and actions.
These moments had a pattern
The more I reflected on the decisions I was most proud of, the more a pattern emerged.
Those were the ones where the data could only take me so far and I needed to draw on something else. I reached for what I had within. Something I carry with me always. Not data, but values, experience, instincts, stories, knowledge of the track record of trust built over time.
The decisions I’m least proud of shared something too. I didn’t seek alignment. I wasn’t fully in the room. I left core pieces of myself outside the door, outside of the moment.
My instinct that something was wrong.
My values pulling in a different direction.
A perspective that might have shifted the outcome if I had been aware enough to use it.
An alignment check isn’t a formal process. It is a pause on the precipice. A moment to check in with yourself before a decision lands or a communication goes out.
Am I bringing all of myself to this? Or have I left the most important parts of me outside the room?
This is also where it gets personal. If your values differ significantly from your organisation’s, the tension builds internally over time. Going against what you believe in order to do the job extracts a cost. Choosing to stay in those situations is a trade-off only you can make. But it is always a choice.
What you are actually carrying
Across the moments when I was unquestionably myself, proud ones and ones I’m not, I realised I was drawing on the same things each time.
Not the capacity for data but the lived experience that lets me see patterns others might miss. The intuition that steers me before I can prove it. The values that tell me what I can live with and what I can’t. The stories I’ve collected that give me confidence and context when logic alone isn’t enough. And the trust I’ve built over time, a bank balance earned decision by decision, that gives my voice weight in the room.
These things are different for every leader. They come from who you are, how you have lived, and how you have led. No two people carry the same collection.
But we all carry something.
A unique bag for everyone
Every leader carries these things with them into every situation. Every decision. Every communication moment, large and small. Whether consciously or not, we draw on what we carry.
The leader who uses it intentionally pauses at the precipice. They balance data with the full weight of who they are, experience, intuition, values, stories, earned trust, and they bring it in service of others. Not for themselves. Not at the cost of others.
This is not impression management. Impression management is performing a version of yourself others prefer to see. This is something different. Knowing yourself well enough to bring the right things at the right moment. Genuinely, not strategically.
I have come to think of this as a Yellow Bag (yes there is a story as to why yellow and why a bag and I promise to come back and share that one with all it’s rather wacky detail.) Suffice to say we all have one. No two are the same.
The question is whether you know what’s in yours.
An invitation
Bringing your whole self to work was always a good idea. It just needed to be more specific.
Not a general invitation for self-expression alone. Rather deliberate practice, asking for consciousness at the pinch points, when what you do and how you do it carries disproportionate weight. When the data has taken you so far and something more is being asked of you.
The moments I’m most proud of weren’t comfortable. They were the ones where I stood on the precipice, aware, and brought everything I had to the decision.
Why? Because the cost of not doing felt higher than the cost doing so.
That’s what alignment with who you are looks like in practice.
Now that I have felt it and named it, I seek to use the unique bits I carry like a decision accessory. Deliberately.
Could you name the things you carry with you? Could you access them deliberately at the moments that matter, rather than discovering what you believe only after the moment has passed?
That’s the difference between authenticity that happens to you and authenticity you choose.
Your bag is already packed. The question is whether you know what’s in it?
Have a great week.
Fiona
Look again. See what was always there.
