Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis and I'm Helen Tupper and you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.

Each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and

actions to help you find your way through our increasingly squiggly world of work.

And this week we're talking about and taking on quite a big topic, I think, which is authenticity

at work. There's lots to explore and we're going to cover what makes you authentic, how to help

other people be authentic as well in terms of the people that you work with, and also apply

authenticity in a way that kind of works for you.

I can always tell how like meaty a topic is going to be by the amount of time Sarah and I spend discussing and debating it before we start recording everybody.

We've sort of done a pod. We've done a pre-podcast today, haven't we?

Because I think we've got a bit carried away with the authenticity chat. Yeah, but is it like this? And does it really mean this?

And how do people take action with this?

So we've talked about this for quite a long time, everybody,

before we've got to this recording.

So just as a word of warning,

but we've tried to make it as actionable and applicable as possible.

So let's start with a definition,

because I think it's useful for us all to start from a similar place.

So our place is that authenticity is the alignment between our internal sense of self, so who we think we are, and our outward behaviour.

So what we go and do.

It's that alignment between the two, who we think we are and what we go and do.

And I really like this quote

from Brené Brown. She describes it as a daily practice of letting go who we think we're supposed to be

...