Work Besties Who Podcast

Authenticity At Work

• Work Besties Who Podcast • Season 3 • Episode 87

Share episode

Ever notice your voice goes two octaves higher in a meeting—or you rewrite the same email sentence five times because it sounds “too much like you”? In this episode, we’re exploring authenticity at work without turning it into oversharing. Because being yourself at work gets easier when someone else sees you and helps you stay aligned.

This month’s commitment: we don’t punish honesty—we reward it with safety. And we don’t chase perfection; we practice alignment.

In this episode, we cover:

  • What we mean by authenticity: consistency between your values and your behaviors
  • Why authenticity isn’t “unfiltered everything” (you can be real and professional)
  • The two versions of authenticity: corporate (reliability + boundaries) and creative (voice + POV)
  • “Your brand is your behavior”—and how misalignment shows up (hello, “brand panic”)
  • 3 “work bestie” safety signals: reflect you back kindly, protect you in rooms you’re not in, and tell you the truth without shaming you

Try this this week:
Pick one value (clarity, calm, balance, excellence, etc.) → translate it into one behavior people can see. Share it with your work bestie and ask for a gut check.

Coming up this month:

  • Unmasking at Work (and why your brand is your behavior)
  • Authentic Influence (boundaries that protect your brand)
  • How to Stay You While You Grow

Share with your work bestie and tag us with the value + behavior you’re practicing this week.

Send a text

You can watch the full episode on Youtube
Follow us on IG , TikTok, Threads and LinkedIn
Please rate, comment and provide suggestions for upcoming episodes

Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband

Claude F:

Have you ever heard your voice get two octaves higher in a meeting? Or watch yourself type an email and delete one sentence five times because it sounded too much like you. Exactly.

Jess K:

Welcome to February. Work like yourself. This month is all around authenticity and personal branding. And we're doing it in our work bestie way.

Claude F:

Which means we are not doing it alone. We are building it in relationship.

Jess K:

Because being yourself at work becomes easier when someone else sees and loves you. The real you.

Claude F:

Work bestie community. This is our February commitment. We don't punish honesty. We reword it with safety.

Jess K:

And we don't ask for perfection. We ask for a living. By the end of this month, we're going to have a language for who you are, how you show up, and how you talk about it with yourself without feeling fake. Hi, I'm Claude.

Claude F:

And I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K:

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties! Welcome back, work besties. We're here to talk about authenticity. And authenticity to us is consistency between your values and your behaviors.

Claude F:

Yeah, it's something to do with that we have to be careful with. It's not a personality dump. It's not like coming to the office and hey, here's my drama in a team meeting. Can you imagine? It's hey, this is how I operate. So it's not oversharing, being brutally honest. This is a big one, and unfiltered everything. We still all need to be polite.

Jess K:

So it's not necessarily disguising the real you, but finding ways to be the real you without maybe leaning into too much. I think it'd be like we talked before, it's about how and who you are on LinkedIn versus how and who you are maybe on Instagram. Or Instagram. Facebook.

Claude F:

You don't even use Facebook. I know. We're not even on Facebook. I'm so surprised you're saying Facebook. I always say I hate Facebook. What do you want to say? What was MySpace while you're at? Please don't be like MySpace. All right. Anyway. Yeah.

Jess K:

We don't want to um make this feel like this is uh shaming anyone because we understand everybody has different approaches at work, and we're not suggesting that you have to wear a mask or you need to be fake. But you do need to find that middle road.

Claude F:

Exactly, like masking, right? You need to be yourself still, but polite. At the end of the day, that's what it is. We're still in a society. And masking is often, you know, a safety strategy. We just want to say how to unmask a little bit.

Jess K:

In in authentic ways, hence our theme authenticity. So this month isn't necessarily be fully who you are everywhere all the time. It's a little bit more about understanding how to leverage that in the places that matter.

Claude F:

Let's think about it. We think that there are two versions of authenticity, right? The corporate authenticity and the creative authenticity. They are both very real, but also different.

Jess K:

Think about corporate authenticity as how and where you want to show up on LinkedIn. So corporate authenticity is I communicate clearly. I am very clear on my boundaries of what I stand for and what I will do. I keep my promises. It's less about revealing maybe who you are and more about how you reliably show up. So think about things like do my actions match what I say are my values? An example would be if you value calm, but you respond to everything like it's on fire, that's a misalignment.

Claude F:

And your work bestie can lovingly tell you, hey, you're totally spurring right now. Come back. And meanwhile, the creative authenticity is more like your voice, your point of view.

Jess K:

That's the difference between posting non-stop versus posting what's true for you and how you feel. Think about this one as uh what topics do you keep coming back to, or that people keep coming to you about. What do you refuse to pretend about? How do you show up?

Claude F:

I have to say that creative authenticity, you still have to keep your promises, right? That's why I don't really understand.

Jess K:

It's l it's the combination of how you reveal it and what you reveal, but the reliability of showing up really truly matters, right? Like if you're gonna sit there on Instagram and say, I'm planning to post pictures of me in my outfits every single day, and you don't do it, it's not make or break. But if you're on LinkedIn and you say, check back every Wednesday for the work besties, uh notes of the week, which shout out to us, we are starting to do that, then you want to consistently provide that because now people are expecting and purposely going on to find that. I think consistency on your social element, while nice, uh people aren't consuming content in that way, right?

Claude F:

Okay, I get that. But you can still have corporate authenticity with your voice, right?

Jess K:

Your personal brand is an overlap of both. It's gonna be the values and it's going to be how people can count on you, as well as that communication style, that voice that sounds like you. So it's a combination. No one's saying only do one or the other. We're just saying in certain aspects, you may have to lean in heavier on the corporate side of things versus the creative side of things. At the end of the day, you really want you to be shown through. So that authenticity. And it it really comes back to how everybody fosters relationships. And if you think about your work bestie, that is usually often that first safe place or person at work you discuss things with that can help you think about how to bring to life your your voice.

Claude F:

Yeah, your work bestie is really the one that knows you and is not going to punish you or be upset for your real persona, right? So we came up with three work bestie safety signals or ways of uh expressing how a work bestie can make you feel safer, right? So the first one is reflect your back kindly, like that's so you, blah, blah, blah, and it works, right? It's really reflecting. The other one is protecting you in rooms you're not in. For example, the you know, uh presentation or whatever, it's really just did that because she's consistent, not difficult. It's so it's really having uh her back or his back when they are not there. And I have to say that people actually appreciate that because that is really your will you, and uh you really stand for uh who you are and who is around you. And then uh the other one is telling you the truth without shaming you. So, for example, your work bestie is start aspiring, and it's okay to say, hey, stop. That doesn't sound like you, you haven't been yourself. What is going on? And this is something that actually is going to let your work bestie open up uh to you and make things better. I love that. I feel like we do that to each other quite a lot.

Jess K:

Quite a lot. And it's not necessarily I mean, we definitely do it for work, but we do it personally too. Oh yeah, it bleeds into both your personal life as well as your work life. Um, and if you if for you that do have a work bestie out there, this is a great opportunity for you to remind each other of the importance of your friendship and send them this. Start saying, hey, this month I really want to practice showing up more like myself. Can we be accountability buddies? Or can you help me recognize every time I am not consistent in a meeting and be my gut check? Um, because as we talked about, your bet your work bestie is your safety zone or the one that you'll be most willing to hear that very direct feedback unless it's about lipstick on your teeth.

Claude F:

Where it's going to be the look. Again, this is the kickoff for our February theme, and you're going to see some tools about accountability, about branding yourself that is going to be quite interesting for the next three podcasts, was Jess?

Jess K:

Right, yeah. So we really wanted to kick off and provide some of the feedback early on. Um, and you'll hear a lot of these themes and elements reiterated and talked about again with some of our amazing guests that are coming up. The first one was around values to behavioral mapping. Think about one value and translate it into a behavior people can observe. For me, sometimes I'm not the most clear in my communication. So one of the values that I will be working on in plan two is around clarity. Uh, and then you want to translate that into something you can share with your work bestie and say, hey, here's what I'm planning on working on. I have this value. I plan to summarize and do these decisions and actions to help focus through it. And then as they occur, I'm going to leverage Claude as almost like my workout buddy and say, here's what uh worked for me this week and didn't. And or she can be honest and say, in the meetings I saw you in, or communication, even around work bestie, you're still doing black. What would be another one or so? There's so many. Whatever you feel is the value you want to lean in on. Um, I one of I think it would make sense to a lot of work besties because we have a lot of high performers, is around excellence and feeling like they have to be the best at everything. Where we would love to focus, and we actually have one of our episodes coming up where you'll hear a lot more detail around it. But think about things such as just taking a pause or breath. So the behavior, yeah, the behavior could be I don't want to rush at work. I don't want to rush to be answer that question right away. I I will comment in the meeting when I get called on, let me think about that, or give me a second and then talk through it. Things like sharing their process and not just being so focused on the outcome, how do they help level set them? I think that's one either imposter syndrome or high performance elements.

Claude F:

Totally. And at the same time, if if your value is, for example, balance, but you're sending, you know, IMs and emails at 2 47 a.m., for example, or non-stop, with oh, sorry, you know, uh, you don't have to answer now. Well, then your brand is panic, not balance. So how do you it's true? So how do you reflect that? Now we we had that, right, Jess, where it was Monday, five o'clock in the morning, and we had like 500 emails coming, and it doesn't reflect well towards the people you manage or even your managers. So again, how you show up is so important. And how are you going to change your brand versus a panic brand to a more balanced brand? So work bestie can help you. So at the end of the day, think about this week or even for later on your assignment. Pick one value and choose one observable behavior.

Jess K:

Well, that's a good one. I was suggesting we do it as you come up with your own, but it might be good to do it together, right? Because then your work bestie knows you better than anyone. Oh, while Claude's not the one that's sending emails at 247. But let's say you were, I would be able to say, Hey, that's what you should work on. And instead of sending 30 meet messages in the morning, whoever is the one you're most often sending those messages, maybe Monday morning, set up the meeting with them first so you can go through it all. Yeah. That's a great idea of ways that you can leverage each other.

Claude F:

So, Jess, you know my downfall, and I know your downfall, then we are going to keep each other uh accountable and really show up and still being authentic.

Jess K:

Right. And for all of you out there, if you don't have a work bestie, feel free to leverage us. We also want to give you a heads up of what's coming so you can think about maybe one of these potential topics would be the area you'd most resonate with and be able to use that as your value to focus on. Um, so the next three that we have are all around that authenticity and your personal branding, one of which is around unmasking at work and why your brand is your behavior. So if you are somebody who does feel like you are completely two different people and you want to uh break those silos, not fully, but an element. So you the more of uh you comes through, that is a great one to really hone in on.

Claude F:

The second one is authentic influence, which is really about boundaries that protect your brand, right? So how to show up while pushing back and not really hurting your brand.

Jess K:

And then the last one is around how to stay you while you grow. So a lot of that's a good one, yeah, um, are on that trajectory of still getting the next level of leadership or promotion or bigger visibility. Um, and and there's an element that your network is gonna be so happy and proud, but you're gonna evolve at the same time, and they might not always be there with you on that journey. This is a great episode to listen to to understand how to balance that and really still keep the foundation of those friendships, but also help them as well.

Claude F:

Correct. So this month is alignment that we then go to safety, visibility, and growth. So it's a nice light month, Club.

Jess K:

Yeah, yeah, you know. Um, so we're excited how our transition has begun for this season where we're pragmatic in our approach of what we will share with you all. Um, and we continue to ask you all for feedback. You've been amazing. I've gotten some comments on newer social networks like threads. So keep those comments coming. And then for this particular month, make sure to think about you, how you show up and what is that one value, whether you come up with it on your own or your work bestie, collectively come up with it. Work through the month on how you want to bring this to life while still being that authentic you. Whatever you do come up with, share with us. Tag the show and tell your work bestie. And next week we focus on unmasking and how to do it without blowing up your life.

Claude F:

And remember, you don't need to be more impressive, you need to be more you.

Jess K:

So if this episode was helpful, please share with your work besties and don't forget to like and subscribe. See y'all next week.

Claude F:

Until then, keep supporting each other. Bye!

Jess K:

Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype spot.

Claude F:

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other.

Both:

Work besties!

Head Shot

Claude F

Co-host
Head Shot

Jess K

Co-host