The number of people who are suffering from stress, and taking time off of work as a result, is still increasing. Wearing a ‘mask’ i.e. adapting your behaviour to ‘fit in’ and feeling unable to be yourself is a common cause of work related stress. Being flexible with our approach is critical, we all know that rigidity is not particularly engaging or influential, but compromising ourselves and being over flexible turns us in to a contortionist, which cannot be maintained without pain. Our values (things that are important to us) and whether or not we are able to get enough of them at work, dictates how authentic we are able to be. Do we impose constraints upon ourselves internally (our belief systems), or is it really the organisational culture that stops us being us? Enabling people to be authentic in the workplace is the first step to high performance.

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