Hybrid Work. Our Authentic Selves: A New Juncture.
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According to several recent surveys, hybrid work is now the norm for 75%+ of organizations in the US and Europe. This model involves employees working synchronously and asynchronously from different settings, including office, home, and while mobile.??
As social media chronicles, hybrid work, sometimes humorously, breaks down traditional boundaries of how we present ourselves at work and outside. In other words, how we want to be perceived by others, peers, subordinates, or higher-ups. “No matter how much we’ve tried to hide the “other side” of ourselves from our colleagues, Covid-19 … (gave) us no shelter.”
Julia Rozovsky, who led Google’s Project Aristotle, observes:
“No one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home.”
What does “to bring one’s whole self to work” mean? The phrase gained currency due to a famous 2015 TED Talk and subsequent 2018 book with that title.?
A July 2022 Harvard Business Review article reprises the topic through a post-pandemic lens. The author, Dr. Lan Nguyen Chaplin, examines “what It means to be professional while presenting authentically.” To illustrate, Dr. Chaplin shares personal aspects to paint a holistic sense of unique individuality. That portrait includes her formative experiences as a Vietnamese war refugee and her current work as a Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.?
Dr. Chaplin provides a practical guide and checklist as to what “authenticity” entails, including “self-awareness” and a deep sense of one’s “core values” and “boundaries,” those non-negotiable and negotiable. Accordingly, “becoming true to yourself is a life-long journey.”
Benefits
“Acting in ways that reflect your honest beliefs, emotions, and values may be one of the strongest predictors of well-being.” According to research, there are several benefits to being authentic at work, including:
Better life satisfaction
Healthier well-being
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Higher motivation levels?
Improved performance and productivity
Crucial Caution
“The ideal of inclusion has long been to allow individuals to bring their authentic selves to work. However, most inclusion efforts have not explicitly and rigorously addressed the pressure to conform that prevents individuals from realizing that ideal.”
This dynamic involves the idea of “covering .” In 1963, sociologist Erving Go man coined the term … to describe how even individuals with known stigmatized identities made a “great effort to keep the stigma from looming large.”
According to one Deloitte study, 61% of the workforce masks some aspects of their identity to “fit in .” Understandably, minorities face even more pressure to “cover” aspects of who they are as whole human beings.?
Way Forward
People yearn for wholeness, to be free to be themselves, and for their work to be meaningful. Establishing a psychologically safe hybrid work environment is the optimal solution at this crucial juncture.?
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