Holacracy Meets Authentic Relating

Two Complementary Approaches to the New World of Work

During my years as an engineer with Hewlett-Packard, I had the privilege of working with many talented and hard-working individuals. On good days, I put forth my best in the service of large project teams with enthusiasm. On bad days, I could experience a sense of imposter syndrome wondering if I really deserved to be working alongside such brilliant technical contributors.

Yet in the background throughout, I felt a nagging sense that something wasn’t quite right. I think deep down I felt constrained by my professional persona like I couldn’t fully be myself. Looking back, I wonder how many of my colleagues felt similarly.

In the years since, working with individuals from a variety of organizations, I’ve observed this repeatedly. For many, our professional personas feel constraining. In some moments this shows up like paring away some parts of ourselves. In other moments it can feel disingenuine like we’re distorting ourselves to fit in.

To be clear, I don’t think a professional persona is a problem per se. But I do think the way we relate to it can become problematic. The constraints of a professional persona can be quite functional. However, if it becomes fixed and unchanging, we shut down learning and growth. If we overly identify with it, then we lose connection with a deeper sense of authenticity in a case of mistaken self-identity. To counteract these imagined constraints, some of…