Authentic you is the one you need to be in any given situation

Authenticity is the illusion that we are the same person all the time.

During the past year we have heard a lot about being “authentic”. It’s the leadership trait everyone must have, apparently. It even has been referred to as a core plank of Scott Morrison’s election campaign.

Authenticity is the illusion that we are the same person all the time, when that couldn’t be further from reality. We show different sides of ourselves to cater to the situation.

That isn’t only OK, it’s also a good thing we should accept and embrace.

One prominent executive told me: “I have made a career out of being quite a different person with my clients than with my friends.” She said at work she was the very best version of herself and that worked for that situation. For her, it was knowing why she was there and delivering on that.

Her comments reminded me of a chairman with whom I’m working at the moment. He is the most self-assured person I know despite being thrown into a testing role. He is a different person with his staff than he is with the board. He has a different relationship with the chief executive than he does with the executives, and he understands when to listen, when to speak, and what to say to shareholders and politicians. There are common elements in all of these. He is always humorous and friendly, he has always done his homework and he is very happy to say when he doesn’t understand something. But he knows that he is performing for different audi­ences, and they all need something from him.

Research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the US found that people who are different at work and at home are more prone to unethical behaviour.

Like the chairman, a good leader has common traits for their different settings; and like the executive, they know why they are there.

Doing this means you won’t succumb to hiding who you are. Instead it will give you clarity of purpose. Trying to fit into someone else’s idea of leadership is when the ethical missteps occur.

Herminia Ibarra of the London Business School says it is OK to change tactics from one day to the next. She says it is how we figure out what is right for the challenges and circumstances we face.

Ibarra, who researches leadership transition, says we should be cautious of being, well, too cautious. She says people learn and change through experience. We should be aware of our differing identities for different audiences and analyse why we give them different things.

Her research shows that by doing this we can develop our own style of leadership that delivers for ourselves, our staff, our clients and our workplace.

This is not lying or deceiving your colleagues; it is about bringing what the moment requires. Across time the breadth of your skills and how you approach challenges become clearer.

To be singularly authentic is to be stale or, ironically, deceptive.

There is no point in pretending the way you are at work is how you are all the time. We both know it just isn’t true.

Conrad Liveris is a corporate adviser on workplaces and risk.