Be yourself, fully yourself, simply yourself

In the summer of 2015, I left for vacation with a mission at hand: Prepare myself for a new adventure, but also a great unknown, as I was to become the first female CEO of a 160-year-old High Jewelry Maison, Boucheron.?My coach, who had accompanied me throughout my career, left me with an assignment: Define the posture I wanted to adopt as Boucheron’s CEO, whom I wanted to be in my new position, and how I wanted to be perceived.

Which led to some thinking, in the quiet countryside of Normandy. I had the privilege and responsibility to lead a Maison that I deeply respected, to its next stage. Without knowing the insides of the Maison yet, I was already imagining what kind of leader I wanted to become, recalling the various leadership style I had encountered in the past.

I came back with no answer but one conviction: I just wanted to keep on being myself. Which can seem obvious, but is not a given. For the last twenty years, I had had the chance to grow in my career without compromising at any time on who I was, even if I had to adapt to my environment, my managers, and the political complexity of any big organization. I did not see the point in changing that at 45 years old because I was becoming a CEO. I had always been exactly the same at work as at home, with my friends and my family. And I wanted that to continue.

This is what I wish for anyone and the reason why we try to create a suitable environment at Boucheron for our teams to be themselves. From this strong belief that being yourself, simply yourself but fully yourself at work, lead to stronger organization and happier teams, was born our philosophy of inclusivity at work.

And this is much easier said than done. Inclusion is not intuitive and often goes against cognitive biases we’ve been relying on for years. Some people always have to do an extra effort, stretch themselves, or hide part of themselves to be heard. And this is why we’ve gone through Conscious Inclusion trainings with the top executives of Boucheron, for two years in a row now, to raise awareness that building inclusivity in our organization is a choice, and needs to be reflected not only in our thoughts but in our behaviors. Our ExCo members are also part of a reverse mentoring program and I myself have been the first to be coached by a mentor from Boucheron's teams.

I strongly believe that inclusion inside companies begins with giving employees the right to be themselves at any time while respecting strong values. This is what creates a common corporate culture and a strong sense of belonging that we call at Boucheron our “Family Spirit”.

#Beyourself #FamilySpirit #Boucheron