Source: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_be_more_authentic_at_work

I’ve only cited the first paragraph, and that’s enough for a quick “Reaction.” Professor Hewlin is going to teach us how to be more authentic at work.  She grounds her advice in this insightful life lesson: “When I worked in banking, I saw a lot of pressure to conform.” This initial insight into “conformity” is then connected to a “prototype for success” in the workplace, i.e. if you want to be successful in banking, you better start acting, looking and talking “like a banker.” Many of us feel similar pressures in our work environments, I mean you gotta “play the part, right?” I suppose the purpose of this excursion into Hewlin’s own professional history is intended to lend an air of credibility to the problem of “authenticity at work.”  Hewlin herself encountered this problem while in banking, which she fixed by…changing jobs. What?!?

Yeah, I did read the whole essay. Her treatment of the subject often left me reacting with snarkiness, “Well, duh!,” or barefaced incomprehension: “WTF?” If Dfugly is to take itself seriously, it’s important to get beyond wtf and snark.  How about we start by bringing out the inherent nonsense of the essay’s title: “How to Be More Authentic at Work.” (Did Hewlin succeed at “being herself” as a banker? Why not?) The title clearly implies that “authenticity” is something that can be taught, which begs the question itself in the following manner: “You too, can be authentic…Let someone else–namely, me–show you how.” Whether this silliness is a concession to internet communication (short, to the point, with an air of addressing a real concern with quick, practical utility in mind–the “medium” governing “the message”), or whether Hewlin simply cannot see the inherent contradiction of “programmatic authenticity,” I cannot say. Or maybe she’s just riding the wave of dissatisfaction felt by millions in the workplace who just want to feel a deeper sense of fulfillment in their jobs, but who don’t know what to do. Hewlin is “an expert” in the field of Organizational Behaviour, and if anyone can help us, it would be her, no? Well, yeah…Uh, that is…no.

Dfugly hackles are up because whatever it is Hewlin thinks she’s doing, her approach to the question of “authenticity” is intellectually inadequate, even experientially flawed: she solved the problem in banking by becoming a university professor. Undaunted by this somewhat odd solution, Hewlin dives right in by offering a three-part portrait of authenticity entitled: “What Authenticity Looks Like.” (WTF?  “Authenticity” cannot be “type cast,” can it?) As Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at McGill University, Hewlin’s position of enunciation is leveraged, “branded” as it were by a well-known institution of higher learning. Can the “McGill University brand” dispel problems that are embedded in her presentation of how to be more authentic at work? Will readers of her article “buy the brand” or think for themselves? Dfugly can help, but you will make up your minds for yourselves.

She does get some stuff right. Hewlin identifies moments where individuals struggle with authenticity in the workplace. Employee dissatisfaction rises when organizational values contradict values held by individuals within the organization. (Duh?) When this happens, there is an effect of coercion that drives individuals to conform and thereby betray other values they would prefer to uphold. The object of this conformity is “job security” and perhaps eventual professional growth (read: bigger paycheck). These points are easily legible in the paragraph cited above: “get ahead,” “gain favors,” and experience “success” in one’s work environment. These are the reasons that leverage “conformity” which then drive employees into behaviors which are “inauthentic.” Hewlin summarizes in the following manner: “According to my research, certain situations and environments tend to promote conformity. In organizations where employees are not invited to participate in decision making, we tend to feel more pressured to create facades.” (Side note: There’s a big difference between being invited to participate, and effective power to make decisions. Isn’t this “invitation to participate” in many instances already a “façade”?)

Although still rather “Duh!” (does it take a university professor to figure this out? Is “research” required to make the point valid?), I must concede that her points are not wrong. There’s obviously a strong correlation between “conformity” in the workplace, and “success” in that workplace, especially when it comes to the “core values” of a given institution. My biggest complaint, however, is that nowhere does Hewlin directly address the much larger “conformity” that lies buried under vocabulary she has already employed: “get ahead,” “gain favors” and the more general term of “success.” She rightfully zeroes in on “core values” as where conflicts between “conformity” and “authenticity” play themselves out, but she never addresses the single most prominent “core value” of virtually all institutions in which we find ourselves employed: “economic viability.” Whether an organization be “for” or “not for” profit, what most commonly drives organizational decision making is “economic viability.”

A poignant rendering of “economic viability.” From, Falling Down, 1993, Joel Schumacher. The clip is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7oglIAdnJM

There is certainly good reason to value an institution’s economic viability. (Who is currently working for Sears, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018? If Sears fails, then all the regular people who worked for Sears face potential failure as well. Fuck the highly paid executives who have escaped the material necessity of work.) I can easily agree that economic viability is very important. But are there not “core values” of a different type which are equally, or even more important than “getting ahead” and “success”–especially when “success” is almost universally understood as some variant of “professional growth”? Hewlin hints at this larger conflict:

Sometimes, we actually get advice from people we trust that encourages us to conform. I’ve had some older people in my life say, “Be careful now, keep your head down. Everybody doesn’t have to know what’s going on in your life.” My elders were concerned that I, an African American woman in the business world, not create a stir and become overscrutinized on matters beyond my work performance.

Hewlin is aware of the problems that may arise when personal values enter into conflict with institutional values. The threat of such a conflict hovers in the wings of virtually all work environments. When this conflict takes center stage, what is one to do? Conform? Keep your head down and your mouth shut? Just “do your job” and go home? This is very sound advice if what you must protect above all things is your paycheck. But is this also not in fact a persistent source of insecurity that most of us live with every day as “employees”? Whether you agree or disagree with company policy, you do need a paycheck. Depending on such things as age, gender, education level and experience, losing a paycheck easily becomes materially catastrophic, especially if the reason you lost it was because you came out in authentic support of a human value that was in conflict with “company policy.” Whatever the case, ask yourself this: What other institution is going to hire you? You’re now “a troublemaker.” What kind of recommendation are you going to get from your previous employer? Hewlin knows this very well, which she blatantly understates in her essay with: “[…] in many cases, the choice to be authentic is a bit risky.” And that’s pretty much all she says about that.

What does the historical record of corporate behavior say when it comes to balancing “human values” with “business values”? Do most employers, large or small, look favorably upon organized labor? Where do you think you got your week-end? Why is it now the case that children cannot be employed as factory workers? Why is there such a thing as a minimum wage? Do you think corporate entities donated these things? Why is most of what we consume here in the west manufactured in what used to be called “third world countries”? I leave it to the reader to find their own answers.

One last section of Hewlin’s article needs to be treated before I sign off. It’s the first paragraph of the section entitled: “How to be more authentic.”

Now for that part no one ever explained to you: the nuts and bolts of how to be authentic. To start off, the first question to ask about your core values is whether they are functional. Do they compromise relationships? Is there any bias connected to them? If they are dysfunctional, then it is time to reevaluate them and develop new core values, understanding that it may take some work. Core values are the basis of our habits and are therefore difficult to change, but it’s necessary if those habits (although authentic) are working against you.

Never mind the condescending “reveal” about how to be more authentically you (I kinda thought that I was supposed to be doing most of that work myself), wherein does one find the “dysfunctionality” mentioned above–you know, the one that leads to “inauthentic behavior” at work? Look no further, for that dysfunctionality is within you: “[…] the first question to ask about your core values is whether they are functional.” The problem is you: “Core values are the basis of our habits and are therefore difficult to change, but it’s necessary if those habits (although authentic) are working against you.” [“although authentic”???? Italics by Dfugly.] Never mind the actual content itself of the values you might have (honesty, human dignity, people first, or some other core value that you hold in high esteem–however authentic it may be), if your values don’t work at work, they’re wrong.

I cannot begin to fathom the blindness required to have such a one-sided understanding of how conflicts of value arise in the workplace. The problem is you and your core values (“although authentic”?!?). No analysis is carried out upon the larger dynamic itself of the employer-employee relationship with respect to power. No analysis is forthcoming with respect to a potential dysfunction of the corporate value itself of “economic viability” (or simply “profit”), nor with respect to the hegemony of this “value” and its effects on American culture in general. What this blindness says to me is this: in Hewlin’s eyes, “economic viability” has become la valeur par excellence, under which all other values must be subsumed (including yours).  If you have a problem with that, well…then it’s quite literally your problem. You have a “choice”: shut up and conform, or figure out what’s wrong with your core values and bring them into conformity with corporate values, or with the values of “business” in general.  If you can just figure out what’s wrong with you, then you and your employer will co-exist in a deeper, more authentic harmony! (Pffffft!!!! Forget all that…Just do what Hewlin did: if your personal values don’t work in banking, forget about trying to make the world a better place by changing the culture of banking; change jobs instead.)

How ’bout that! As “relational” as Hewlin claims authenticity is (point 1 of her three-part portrait of what authenticity looks like), only one side of the relationship need undergo the trouble of self-examination: you. The institution you work for is “God,” and God doesn’t compromise. Hewlin seems to be little more than a mouthpiece for what used to be referred to as “the Man.” (But she self-identified above as an African American woman. Just what is going on here?)

This all boils down to something pretty radical (radical in a bad way). Let’s simply call it “very disturbing,” especially since it’s coming from a university professor who specializes in Organizational Behaviour (read: Human Resource Management). If authenticity is a problem in the workplace, if you cannot express your adherence to human values that supersede the value of your paycheck, then the most authentic feeling you might have as you “conform” to a “prototype for success” at work, is fear, or a general “lack of belonging” as you go about keeping a roof over your head, your kids in college, or your access to healthcare. 

You have a “choice”: “buy in” and become “the Man” (but pretend you’re not), or “Shut up and do your job.“ Is this any way for an “authentic” human being to live?  Your call.

Thédoc