Why Bringing Your Authentic Self To Work Is Bad Advice

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Management, Careers, Business

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is “just be yourself at work” really the best advice? In this 500th episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast, Helen and Sarah explore the tricky topic of authenticity — and why being 100% yourself at work might not always help you succeed. Borrowing brilliance from Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, they discuss the difference between effective vs. ineffective authenticity, why trust often matters more than “being real,” and how to adapt without feeling fake. You’ll learn three practical actions to help you show up authentically and intentionally in ways that work for you, your team, and your career. Episode 500 🦞 Pre-order Learn Like A Lobster: PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn Amazon UK - https://amzn.to/3KcRZaR ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Introduction & Announcement 02:19 Celebrating 500 episodes 🎉 06:32 What is “effective authenticity”? 09:05 Why trust may be more important than authenticity 11:40 Action 1 17:55 Action 2 21:16 Action 3 23:35 Questions to help you apply this week’s shortcut 25:41 What’s next: Borrowing brilliance from maps 🎯 What You’ll Learn - The difference between helpful and unhelpful authenticity - Why trust and emotional intelligence matter more than “bringing your whole self” - How to balance being true to yourself with adapting to your team - 3 actions you can take to use authenticity for career success 📚 Resources Mentioned Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead) by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Be-Yourself-Authenticity-Overrated/dp/1647829836 HBR Article: https://hbr.org/2025/08/do-you-have-an-emotionally-intelligent-team The Values Institute https://values.institute/ AI Skills Sprint - https://youtu.be/5swOYWW6l7M?feature=shared For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Squiggly Careers podcast. And one quick thing, this is our 500th episode today. Thank you.
0:07.1	Effective authenticity is where you project a version of yourself that resonates with others whilst maintaining a semblance of genuineness.
0:17.9	Trust is more important than authenticity. Whether they're being their authentic self
0:22.3	as a person flying the plane, you know, they're bringing themselves to work, that is less important
0:26.3	than trust. Do you trust them to fly the plane? Are you part of an emotionally intelligent
0:32.7	team? Interesting thinking about the we rather just the I am I emotionally intelligent or
0:37.8	be emotionally intelligent you need to understand like how does this team work it's almost
0:43.9	kind of keep questioning yourself what ideas do the team need for me at the moment because
0:48.3	the last thing they need is more ideas you know sometimes more ideas actually annoying and it's
0:51.8	overwhelming what we need is decisions, not ideas.
0:56.4	Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Each week we borrow
1:02.7	some brilliance and turn that curiosity into actions in a way that we hope will help all of us
1:08.5	succeed in our squiggly careers.
1:16.2	And in today's episode, we are going to be tackling the topic, it's hard to say, of authenticity,
1:20.3	which it turns out also might be harder than you might think to do.
1:24.1	And I was intrigued by somebody who's worked we followed for ages.
1:27.2	I think we're just really big fans of how he thinks. And that is Dr. Thomas
1:28.6	Tomorpe Music, who has a new book all about basically like not being yourself, this mantra of
1:34.6	just bring your whole self to work. And what does he call it? Like the authenticity cult or
1:39.7	somebody like that. He's basically like very, very anti this idea of everyone should just be themselves at work.
1:47.9	So we thought today that we would talk about that a little bit, maybe share some of his insights and our own opinions on his advice.
1:55.8	And then as ever, because we're trying to turn our curiosity into actions for you at work. We've got three things
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AmazingIf, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of AmazingIf and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.