Becoming the best version of you.

When I'm coaching executives, we typically gather feedback from others to recognize any blind spots between how they show up and how others perceive them.

There often comes a time when my client will decide that while they can accept a certain item of feedback, they still refuse to change their approach.

This isn't because my clients don't value others' perceptions.

But that the client may feel that in changing to someone else's expectations, they are losing who they are, and don't subscribe to a certain success criteria held by the colleague(s).

For instance, I worked with a client who didn’t want to just “talk” for the sake of talking, like many of his other peers.

To them, this behavior made him seem aloof and uninterested.

To him, his teammates' comments often lacked substance and it seemed they loved the sound of their own voices.

Now, in the fast-paced world of corporate dynamics, it's easy to lose oneself, whether you are on one side of a style issue or the other.

We like to think that success at work always brings personal fulfilment but that’s not always the case.

You may have a set of values that you want to honor toward your fulfilment, that don’t quite align with the metrics that go into success in your career.

And when this dissonance comes up, we often feel as if our authenticity is at risk.

Some of us double down on that, thinking "I’m going to be me, take it or leave it."

Others shy away from being who they really believe they are, and work to please others’ definitions of what is expected.

To be sure, there’s no right or wrong answer to this.

We know that people often have to “play the game” to get ahead even if that means shedding a bit of who you are to do so.

But we also know that it’s possible to be too authentic.

After all, some of the worst leaders in history were “too much of themselves” to care what others thought about them.

The one thread that does ring true, I believe, is to be open to learning, whether you decide to change or not.

To be curious, to seek understanding, to be willing to change if insight merits it.

I published an article in Forbes last week, based on a conversation I had with Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei and The Leadership Consortium founder and leadership expert Anne Morriss.

They co-wrote a book that just came out, called Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.

You can read the article here.

In their book, they write about trust and how it takes three components: authenticity (others experience the real you); logic (your reasoning and judgment are sound so people know you can do it) and empathy (people know you care for them).

And when one or more of these components is missing, a trust “wobble” exists that needs to be fixed.

With clients like the one above who didn't want to be as verbose as everyone else, his stress was coming from the fact that he was dialing up his authenticity a lot (in resisting changing for the feedback he got).

This wasn't in-and-of-itself a bad thing.

But the question for him would be, are you dialing up your logic and empathy too?

Are you showing them enough of your credibility that they can trust your judgment? Perhaps in being quiet, he wasn’t.

Similarly, are you showing enough empathy for how your colleagues operate?

Perhaps in only participating in dialogue that he preferred, he was missing opportunities to show that he cared for their preferences.

You can be the best version of yourself and create trust with others while also getting to "be yourself"; you don't have to stop being “authentic” or stop being true to your values.

But you may want to dial up the other parts of your approach to make room for greater trust and safety with others.

And then, any feedback won't feel like a personal attack or a demand for you to change, as much as a piece of data you can use toward greater connection.

Question for you: Where might you be struggling with becoming the best version of yourself?

Perhaps you might also find that the answer isn’t a binary one, in that you stop doing one thing or start living someone else’s definition of success.

It might just be that you have to complement your authenticity with showing more of your high competence and your personal warmth along the way.

For more leadership tips, follow me at Nihar Chhaya, MBA, MCC .