Authenticity is the answer. Really? When ‘being yourself’ at work spells disaster

Via Scoop.it – Intuitive Business

Companies that strive for greater work-life integration should be prepared to deal with issues that never entered anyone’s mind when people kept personal life safely at home.
By Megan Hustad, contributor
FORTUNE — Stressed at work?   Ongoing discussions about the value and usefulness of authenticity, or being yourself at work have not yet led to a clear answer. There is much to be said for allowing, yes, even encouraging people to be themselves at work, bot, as this article points out, that can have unintended consequences.     Ultimately, in considering whether a team or company should to go for more authenticity at the workplace, or prefers to remain ‘professional’, I believe the important point is to be clear about which of the 2 versions is prefered. It probably makes sense to view this as an either/or decision, as it is very difficult to clearly define a specific point on the continuum between the two, formality and professional are such subjective concepts.   The main thing is, if you do decide to be informal, and people should be themselves, you will have to take some bad with the good. 
Via management.fortune.cnn.com

This entry was posted on January 18, 2012 at 15:14 and is filed under Scoops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.