Just be yourself

Beauty with brains. That's the slogan of The Miss Nepal Beauty Pageant. Netizens are outraged when a judge chastised a Miss Nepal aspirant (who is comfortable in her own skin) for not wearing makeup and showing up in glasses instead of contact lenses for the audition. That led, Shrinkhala Khatiwada, the current Miss Nepal, to post a selfie in which she appeared without makeup with the hashtag #nomakeupandstillbeautiful. 

The very thought of being authentic can be a difficult one to grasp and hold on to. We must learn to confront the mask we so comfortably wear to work every day. 

On the outside, the mask of a leader would likely say "Strong," "Confident," "Competent," "Ambitious," "In charge," or other words we believe the world wants us to be. But what about a leader's mask say on the inside? "Scared?" "Worried?" "Overwhelmed?" "Stressed?" "Unprepared?" I know mine would. And I bet our masks would look a lot more similar than we've ever really acknowledged.

I acknowledge my imperfections. A tree does not try to make all its branches straight. It is perfect in its imperfection, perfectly imperfect. And yet it does change and grow over time.

The answer for you and me, is to try to live in that delicate balance between striving to improve in character while celebrating our unique personality and talents.

I am not a details person. It's not necessarily a defect. It is just part of who I am. It doesn't give me permission to be negligent about my commitments, and to some extent, I try to improve my ability to manage details. In addition, I surround myself with people who thrive on taking care of details.

Is this desire to present a better face to the world than the one we see in ourselves a necessary component of leadership? How many of us are one person at home and a completely different person at work?

I believe authenticity is less about putting on display the full range of emotions we experience every day and more about sharing our masks so our teams can see who we really are.

Life and work meet every single day. As a leader I want to encourage people bringing their vulnerabilities and full lives to work. There will always be a part of work that is "fake it till you make it." I think that's absolutely fine. We should always be striving for betterment, self-improvement and personal transformation. 

Where we go wrong is asking different questions: what kind of leader does the world expect me to be? What kind of leader does my boss want me to be? What kind of leaders seem to achieve the greatest financial success? 

A much  more interesting - and useful - question is What kind of leader do I want to be?

I had been told earlier in my life that I was ruthless. That I didn't care for anyone or anything, but just did what I had to do to get the next job done. Today, I knew what a mistake that was, and realized I wanted to be sensitive to the people I worked with and to their lives. It works. The results prove it.