How to be Your Authentic Self at Work
We all know that it’s important to remain professional at work. We must be careful not to yell or come across as combative. We can even take that a step further for the Black and Brown community and admit that we are forced to extend ourselves to be overly helpful and subservient in a way that is not always natural, nor in our comfort zone.
I remember when I was working at the Gap in high school, I would answer the phone and recite the standard greeting, “Hi, thanks for calling Gap Men. Jessica speaking. How may I help you?”. Whenever I received personal calls, I was often surprised when my voice (including my name announcement) wasn’t recognized. Without realizing, I had changed my vernacular (or code-switched) in order to come across as more “professional”. My own mother, boyfriend, and best friend didn’t even realize it was me on the phone and would always ask to speak to me! I would tell them it was me and move along into the reason for the call. No big deal, right?
Occurrences like this persisted. I would encounter people in my personal life who wouldn’t even recognize me at my workplace the next day, even as we were engaging in a face-to-face conversation! I was often praised for being able to leave my “ghettoness” in the streets and be more white presenting or professional (depending on who was speaking). It did not appear to be a negative quality so I adopted this high contrast as the standard. I believed the same was true for everyone. The stark contrast from being “myself” to being “my-work-self” was so acceptable to me that if I did not see it in other people I interacted with, I felt like something was wrong. I felt like I was winning because of it and having “it all”. Characterizing “it all” as a professional life and a personal life.
I have now learned that this contrasting view of yourself is not sustainable. It promotes the idea that your authentic self is not good enough. If you learn to work on yourself holistically, it is possible to exude your personality at all times. Please understand that I do not mean one should not wear many hats. I definitely have a hat closet! The difference now is that there is only one person wearing all of the hats. There is no such thing as “Professional Jessica” or “Ghetto Jessica”. There is only one Jessica at work and at home. I lead in all aspects of my life and not the other way around. I am able to say that my one true authentic self is acceptable in every space that I occupy, and my life has improved because of it. I understand a bit better How to Accept Myself to Improve My Career.
I want to suggest reading a few self help books and actively working to internalize the basic or Cheesy Principles that stands out to you. I read 101 Great Ways to Enhance Your Career by the Riklans and it was pretty easy to digest. Pay close attention to the self help books that make you roll your eyes. Think in depth on the ones that seem generic in nature. Those are usually the pieces that you have been missing.
Think of situations that you have been unsuccessful in. Analyze what you could have done to be more successful regardless of the external environment. I am a marketing professional so I call this a SWOT Analysis of Self. Know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as they relate to the situations that you were unsuccessful in. Once you know what your SWOT shows, you will be able to see what you need to work on. You will notice a recurrence of issues that were weaknesses in your professional career and a trend of situations where you fell for the same external threat.
If you want to discuss my SWOT please let me know in the comments.
Jessica
