Why Employers Need to Stop Asking For the ‘Real You’ at Work
Companies increasingly ask for authenticity in the workplace — but is anyone actually prepared for it?
Comedian Norm Macdonald once noticed a troubling trend among new stand-ups: the rise of “confessional comedy.” He saw individuals who were way more interested in sharing cringeworthy, raw, ragged, look-how-brave-I-am anecdotes, rather than handcrafted jokes that earned some hard-earned applause. In Norm’s eyes, they weren’t stand-up comedians so much as shameless performers with an agenda — people who were leveraging their painful pasts as a distraction from not being funny in the first place.
Here’s how he put it:
“I saw a one-woman show once and she goes, ‘Well, my mother had breast cancer and now I have breast cancer.’ And I’m like… well, that’s everybody. They think it’s so special when everyone gets cancer and dies. It’s the height of narcissism to think that just because you have cancer, you’re brave. How is that brave? It seems cowardly to me.”
Norm hadn’t simply identified a stand-up comedy trend; he’d zeroed in on a symptom of a larger problem that is quietly and irrevocably reshaping the modern workplace. Post-COVID, employers have increasingly encouraged, if not expected, their people to bring their “true self” to the job. Forbes is one of a fucktillion publications trumpeting this trend; they’re doing a mind-boggingly hilarious job of profiling a CEO and treating their subject like they’re some unique trailblazer in this “Be Yourself” crusade when they’re anything but. I mean, here’s one. And another one. Oh, and here. This one, too…
“Authenticity” is no different than “transparency,” another HR buzzword. You’ve undoubtedly encountered this yourself, as it’s folded into everything from onboarding materials, ads for training classes, and employee emails. It’s the backbone of many internal wellness campaigns, too, which feature taglines such “Let’s get real here,” “We’re not a workplace — we’re your second home” and “You do you” — all shades of the same woefully misguided idea.
Certainly, these are a far cry from “I don’t care what you do on your own time,” but they’re also a zillion light years beyond the “Stop crying and just do your job” drumbeat of, say, our parents’ generation. It marks a sea change that is both suspiciously sudden and strangely sympathetic, challenging not only what we should bring to our jobs, but who we should bring.
That’s why Norm Macdonald’s skepticism toward confessional comedy echoes my own concerns around this new feelings-friendly posture that corporations across the globe continue to adopt. It’s not unlike the family Thanksgiving dinner table or the endless high school reunion that is/was Facebook: we all expect impossible levels of transparency from the world around us. But in terms of corporate life, an employee’s emotional well-being has a currency that it’s never had.
Earlier in my career, a mental-health day was accomplished by calling in sick and watching The Price is Right. In 2023, companies offer “Mental Health Day” as a sanctioned attendance option. Hell, even my kids’ attendance apps offer it now. And while I appreciate it on a surface level, I can’t help but feel like we’re drifting away from professional integrity and into murkier workplace waters. I sometimes wonder what might my grandfather (an engineer and mathematician who spent his entire career with General Motors) would think if he had to tangle with the emotional minefield of the modern workplace…
Authenticity is something that virtually every employer claims to want, but is generally ill-equipped to receive. Whenever an employee is encouraged to bring their “true self” to work and they actually do, the word “brave” suddenly gets thrown around like confetti. I know this for a fact because I’m one of those employees who went all-in with their “Here’s the real me!” poker chips.
(I’ll come back to this.)
Like Norm, I argue that “being real” at work isn’t at all brave — especially when you consider the countless number of colleagues being asked to do the same thing at the same time. True bravery is never the result of some corporate directive. Though studies like this one suggest that openness in the workplace leads to a “richer, more authentic product,” with similar ones indicating that it leads to low turnover rates and better bottom lines.
Those seem like easy answers. As such, what’s truly driving the trend? Is it because when a company that invites employees to share their “real self,” the invitation imbues them with the illusion of a pulse? Think about it for a second. Like, really think about it. Even if your employer’s motives are genuine and well-intentioned, your managers don’t know what they don’t know. The whole “Be Yourself” rhetoric runs the real risk of railroading someone straight to EAP rather than enriching employees’ experiences.
The true risk, as I see it, is having your insecurities, faults, struggles, and secrets serving a company’s interests, not your own. If nothing else, asking for the “real you” hides a much harsher truth in plain sight: there’s no such thing as a “work you” — and everyone knows it.
This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that I’m a recovering alcoholic. <Cue that easy, easy applause> Before finding sobriety, I was as alcoholic as an alcoholic gets. My main skill in life used to be hiding wine bottles around the house in ridiculously obvious, first-place-you’d-look places. In other words, I wasn’t some soaring stock.
The point: for as long as I can remember, it was an unspoken fact that you didn’t bring your personal life to work — especially if you’re, let’s say, an addict in recovery. Home life was home life, work was work, and that was that. For a decade, I worked for JPMorgan Chase which, if you know nothing about finance in all the same ways that I know nothing about sports, is one of the world’s largest banks. (It’s probably The Largest Bank™, but I’m too lazy to Google that.) Anyway, for the better part of my tenure there, even after my alcoholism, home life was a horror show:
Divorce. Dementia diagnosis for my father (who then died shortly after). Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Depression. All of life’s greatest hits.
Imagine your life as if it’s a TV show. Now, let’s say that this TV show has been written, season after high-quality season, by someone like the guy who created The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin’s terrific, right? Sure, but what if at the start of Season 7, Sorkin’s gone and your new showrunner is none other than 1980s comedian Gallagher. Overnight, you’ve gone from West Wing to watermelons — and you have to pretend that nothing has changed. That’s the sort of workforce that I entered into back in the 90s — and for better or for worse, it’s all but unrecognizable from today’s.
Many of us out feel like they deserve Oscar nominations for the day-to-day performances of being who we present to the people around us. At JPMC, I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive, caring firm, full of managers and a seemingly infinite amount of mental health resources. Emotions encouraged; tears accepted. (By the way, no, this isn’t a paid advertisement for JPMorgan.) I mention this because “night and day” doesn’t begin to describe how different JPMC is now from when I started there.
During my first week on the job, around the time when the housing market collapsed, JPMC’s charmingly brash CEO Jamie Dimon was scheduled to visit our office in Columbus, Ohio. (Sadly, it wasn’t in honor of my first week there.) Dimon reads as a perpetually prepared, sharply-dressed, well-bodyguarded, silver-haired billionaire who enjoys peppering profanity throughout his speeches like some Southwestern celebrity chef who just can’t be stopped with the jalapenos.
All I know is the hourlong “town hall” was a massive deal for everyone around me. Walls were scrubbed clean by people on scaffolds while the outside was blasted with high-pressure water. Colorful plants suddenly lined the walkways, thanks to ninja-like gardeners I never saw. Floors were polished with precision. Emails circulated nonstop about how to correctly wear neckties and jackets, not to mention proper skirt lengths. (Just believe me when I tell you this email was necessary for too many people — and I’m looking at you, Call Center Lady Who Loves Pajama Pants.)
This event was standing room only and I was near the back, watching Dimon do his thing, all the while thinking just how happy I was to have a job. When the questions shifted from “Why is our cafeteria food so bad?” to “Can our cafeteria food get better?” to “Have you had our cafeteria food here?”, I was happy to finally hear a real question:
“What advice would you give someone just entering the workforce?”
Dimon thought about this for a couple of beats, and I’ll never-ever forget his response:
“In the real world, no one cares how you feel.”
If cornered, I doubt anyone at the bank (Dimon included) would admit that he ever said this. After all, that doesn’t exactly square with 2023 Corporate America, does it? But when it comes down to it, he was right. No one really, actually, genuinely 100% cares how you feel at work. I mean, not even you do. And if you’re appalled by the suggestion that you don’t deeply care about your co-workers’ feelings, then you’re probably one of those Daniel Day-Lewis-types who stays in character between takes, forgetting they’re in a movie.
No, I’m not saying you don’t care about your colleagues’ feelings; I’m saying that it comes with limits and conditions. Consider this: there is only so much energy available on the planet, which is why two hurricanes can’t ever occur at the same time. The same thing is true about emotions at work. There is only so much emotional capital you can spend on people — especially the people you know from work. So, if you care about everyone, you’re not really caring about anyone.
A company’s very loud and very public investment in the emotional well-being of their people amounts to what I call “empathy theater.” Employers behave in heightened, hyper-aware, super-empathetic ways. They’re the corporate version of Anne Hathaway, I suppose. It’s good to see, but I’m acutely aware that they’re acting their ass off. I’ve had some real dialtones when it comes to managers. Real deer-in-headlights individuals who didn’t sign up to deal with someone’s “truth.” Thinking back on them now, there’s something almost endearing about them.
When the push for authenticity is itself inauthentic, there are costs and consequences. Too many to count, in fact. And take it from me: I’m someone who shared their true self at work.
I’ve always been open and honest about my alcoholic past. Having written extensively about it for years, I was eventually invited to speak about my recovery at work. I said yes. My thinking has always been: “My story isn’t unique, but maybe it’ll be unique to someone out there.” But if I’m being completely honest, I wish I’d kept my goddamn mouth shut. If I’d kept my story to myself, perhaps I could’ve focused on the sobriety part of it more.
You see, when your identity is completely connected to what you share during a 3:00 p.m. “Employee Wellness Roundtable,” you’re never going to outrun it. My decision to be open and honest in the workplace follows me wherever I go. It shadows my LinkedIn profile to the point where I wonder just how many recruiters have thought, “Nice resume, but too bad this guy is a time bomb,” before moving on.
And here’s where it becomes tricky: there really is an overwhelming sense of relief with being yourself in the workplace — especially for a former addict like me who hasn’t exactly been good at being myself. After that moment, I was told to keep telling my story, to continue being this person. So, for me, the true dangers lie in the reactions you can never expect and can never predict.
If you want to live out loud at work, be aware that once you show people who and what you are, that’s who and what you are for the rest of your time at that job. At best, it’s an endless treadmill of making sure you’re living up to someone’s expectations; at worst, it’s like being on on display in a glass jar. Gradually, I became less of an employee than a specimen who appeared in seminars about substance abuse for the company’s EAP program; I gave big speeches for small groups; I sat for internal interviews like this one. I was a go-to cautionary tale, a redemption story, and a recovery poster child conveniently all rolled into one. And with an audience of 250,000 employees, it was both daunting and exhausting to be my “real self” at work all the time.
This trend could be traced back to the COVID-ZOOM days, maybe, where we scoured our co-workers’ backgrounds for details of their home lives. (Come on, don’t lie… you totally did it, too.) But whatever the case, collapsing the distance between home and work doesn’t mean you also have to forfeit your identity in the process, either.
That’s why Norm Macdonald had it right. You can’t unload misdeeds on people and expect applause, nor can you scream from the rooftops that you’ve finally found sobriety, sanity, or stability. You can’t have your chaos “Mary Poppins’ed” all back into its dresser drawers. We all have That One Friend who only does charitable, noteworthy things so long as it’s conspicuously documented on social media, right? It’s not a good look. For me, being open about recovery isn’t an opportunity to humblebrag about a bold, new direction in life. I didn’t know that it has short shelf life.
There’s a Grand Canyon between “confession” and “confessional,” by the way, but people really don’t know the difference. Sharing that painful past doesn’t instantly make it a positive present, and it certainly doesn’t excuse or erase anything. There is zero bravery in revealing that you’re an addict or alcoholic, that’s for sure. None. Bravery is found only in how you use your past experiences to quietly and inward live a better life for you and those around you.
Ironically, many of the sites I’ve written for have shut down or gone offline in recent months. Many of the magazines where I’ve seen my name in print have vanished, too. One after the other. The lessons of my alcoholic past, much like the details of a dream seconds after you wake up, are quickly evaporating. Honestly, it feels like part of me is dying at the same time, too, especially while I still protect that same sobriety I’ve written about.
Why did I tell anyone I was sober outside of AA, let alone someone who struggled with addiction in the first place? Personally, I think it has to do with the fact that even the most cynical, cold-hearted people among us are good people. In my early twenties, back when I was teaching English 101 to students barely younger than me, my final essay prompt was wide open. They could literally write about anything. I mean, come on: what greater gift to a student is that? You want to write about the fashion sense of senior citizens? Fantastic. The history of dishwashing? Sign me up. The secret life of being a Juggalo? Bring it on.
So long as their essay followed the rules that I’d taught them, I figured it didn’t matter. After six semesters, though… it mattered. I couldn’t take it anymore. Without fail, I’d receive at least one or two exhaustively emotional responses from students who wrote about something traumatic, depressing or downright devastating that they’d endured. But those papers were the products of a dangerously lazy writing prompt on my part — in the exact same ways employers keep inviting your “full self” into the workplace.
My students were submitting torrential-downpour confessionals —these 12-point, double-spaced grenades thrown over the wall — that provided uncomfortably detailed narratives that were (probably up until then) known only to close family, friends, and/or law enforcement officials. My immediate response? I awarded those papers with a solid A, not to mention using adjectives like “brave” or “courageous” in my comments. (Sound familiar?)
Over time, though, things changed because they had to change. I wasn’t colder or more callous — I simply had to ignore what they were saying to focus on how they were saying it. I evaluated all of the things the papers were missing: structure, flow, spelling, style, syntax, reasoning, punctuation. Those papers, I discovered, missed the mark just like I had when I awarded an A to one of them.
It’s human nature to get distracted with empathy for someone’s situation as much as it is to praise an otherwise hollow piece of writing. In the past, when I’ve helped a student or a friend talk through something difficult, I’m never quite ready for the result — even if I see it coming from parsecs away. But it’s my instinct to overcompensate and I suspect that’s how companies react when we bring “my authentic me” to the office. I wonder just how many millions of dollars have been spent by companies hurriedly trying to build support structures once authenticity is in the door. Where many employees see brand-new counseling programs and support services, I’m sure others see difficult discussions and dollar signs spreading like bacteria across their budgets and org charts.
As an instructor, the question for me was this: “Am I giving a C+ to a student’s paper, or am I giving a C+ to that student’s experience?” It’s as thorny as much as it’s preventable. What I’m saying is there’s no joy in me giving a C+ grade to a student’s raw piece of writing. Even when I sharpened my end-of-year writing prompt, I thought I’d be better able to filter those confessionals about repression, rape or racism. As it turns out, whenever I invited even the smallest part of someone’s authenticity into the room — as a college instructor in the classroom or a manager in an office — the damage will always emerge in another way.
The chair of our English department, for example, strongly suggested that I “maybe go easy” the next time around with the students who wrote sensitive replies to my new, narrower prompt. After some complaints from these undergrads’ parents that their freshmen kids needed counseling because of the C or C+ they deserved, I was asked to dial future grades to a, say, B-. My chair’s exact suggestion was: “Just keep these kids above sea level, okay? They’re pouring their hearts out here.”
And so, I pulled my punches. I was false and inauthentic all while grading genuine, real stories riddled with typos. Truth is a lot like water in that way: the more you try to contain it, the more that it does untold and unseen damage. Rain always finds your house’s weaknesses. A brand-new roof is fantastic to have, but if someone didn’t power-nail just one shingle correctly, your dining room ceiling suddenly has a soft spot. No matter how it comes in, no matter who tries to guide it — authenticity affects anyone and everyone it comes into contact with. Department chairs and 23-year-old English instructors included.
I’ve been in many different employment positions since I first found sobriety, but I’ve never approached one job thinking that my checkered past was somehow going to become a burnished future. It never pays off. I put it front and center on LinkedIn; I tell people; I’ve even opened some job interviews with it. If you ever decide to share your truth online, at work, with extended family, or even that shady dude behind you right now (don’t turn around!), here are a few things to consider before you do:
· Check your motives. Ask yourself who you’re doing it for. If you’re doing it for the adrenaline rush of coming clean and/or loudly telling everyone that you are who you are… well, consider weighing catharsis against all of the costs and consequences. Think about the average amount of time you’re excited by likes and swipes on social media. Three seconds? Five? After the dopamine wears off, you’re left in a vacuum.
· Journals exist for a reason. For me, once I let the genie out of the bottle, it was over. No one at my job said anything after I was “out,” but there was always an unspoken distance in the room. I knew that they knew that I knew that they knew. That sort of thing. For a long time, my AA sponsor was often concerned that I was putting too much of myself out into the universe with my articles. “You don’t have to write everything as if it’s going to be published,” he said. “Sometimes it’s good to keep it to yourself.”
· It follows you. In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend admonishes him for writing about her online, arguing that the internet is written with a pen, not a pencil. It lasts. The same is true with everyone you tell, no matter where you decide to tell it. It’s the little piece of corn that gets stuck in your teeth for as long as you’re at your job.
· Do you need approval all the time? You’ll always get approval when you put yourself out there. Think about the last time someone told you a family member or a pet died. Nine times out of ten, you didn’t greet that with silence, did you? You gave them the “I’m so sorry” reflex, right? Well, the same is true when you bring authenticity to the workplace. People don’t know how to react so they react the way everyone else around them does. But when that approval wears off, you have to live in the sort of galactic emptiness that fills a star when it goes supernova. Those “likes” will quickly and quietly fade and you will have to forever be okay with the person you’re presenting.
· Welcome to the next level of insecurity. If you believe that bringing your “true self” to work will give you the boost of confidence you’ve been missing all this time — it won’t. If nothing else, whatever confidence you had in yourself becomes a liability. You’ll find yourself questioning everyone and everything.
Bringing your “full self” requires you to live your life twice. What I mean is that living your life is one thing, but fulfilling the expectations in the eyes of your employer is an additional work requirement that probably isn’t in your job description. Turns out: it’s actual work being yourself. Even if you have nothing to hide, when a police car rides your tail on the highway, odds are that you’re putting your hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. You’re doing your best impression of a good driver. Now, try doing that all the time. Imagine having a police car behind you at every turn, signal and light. It’s exhausting and unsustainable.
When an employer asks for authenticity or invites you to “share your story,” your pain is their gain. If you sometimes feel like nothing more than an employee ID number, your honesty will minimize you in the same exact way. Opening up at work can you reduce you to little more than a quirk, trait, or weakness in co-workers’ minds, instead of being seen as an evolving, changing, or dynamic human.
Like Norm Macdonald said: you’re not unique. Nothing you say is going to break new ground, nor are you the first person in the history of the world (or employment) to have the story that you have. Truth be told, when we talk about the past, we’re keeping that past alive — and for those of us with painful ones, we’ll never achieve escape velocity. Is sharing it with people we don’t really know or in places we don’t feel comfortable helpful?
There can be something truly beautiful about seeing someone share their lives in a space that generally suffocates any mention of it. But when it’s encouraged with a capital “E” and it’s an everyday occurrence to learn something special or surprising about your co-workers… well, what you don’t share at work can be far more powerful than what you do.
Paul Fuhr is the author of the well-received alcoholism memoir Bottleneck. His writing has appeared in The Literary Review, McSweeney’s, The Sobriety Collective, InRecovery, AfterParty and The Fix, among others.
