As a manager or leader, you've got to look out for your staff. Your job is to enable them to do theirs, and one way to do this is to remove obstacles, not just the obvious, legally required ones around health and safety, but also the more subtle ones like excessive pressure, bullying and harassment.

Maybe you could encourage people to be open to fun at work - not everyone is going to join in after work socials and so on, but you can make it clear that you value each person as an individual. Happy people, working in a friendly atmosphere will be more productive than if they are always looking out for the next telling off!

You can demonstrate the behaviour you want to see in your staff - courtesy, patience, kindness - and be a good example. 

This doesn't mean that you don't call out poor performance; it's part of your role as a manger to do that in pursuit of the business aims, but keep it strictly to observed behaviours, without involving the personal worth of the worker themselves. 

What do you think? Have you experienced contrasting styles of management yourself? Where did you flourish best? It's been said that people leave managers, not jobs - this is a thought worth pondering!

Another aspect of Authenticity in a manager is how your personal values align with those of your organisation. If there is an obvious mismatch - for example you believe strongly in the importance of good health, but you work for a tobacco firm, then you might have a problem. 

  

It's helpful to know what our true values are. We might aspire to certain values but on honest reflection we may realise that our actions don't in fact  support them. Here's one that's uncomfortable for me personally - I have got involved with climate matters recently, yet I took a very carbon intensive flight to New Zealand only a few months ago. 

 

It looks like I value contact with my daughter more in the short term than the safety of the planet in the long term. I am looking at how to offset the carbon for that trip, but it's still a painful  example of value conflict.

 

Maybe the bottom line is to show up as yourself, with honesty, and to be the same person at work as we are at home.

 

What do you think?