The Business of Being Authentic

A big thing to know about me is I am an incredibly honest, opinionated, and somewhat blunt person. It comes from growing up in a family where everyone spoke their mind, and if you didn't speak up you didn't get heard. Recently I came across the article below and it led me on a hunt for finding more information about being an authentic leader and how I can be authentic in my career as it continues to grow. 

As a young professional I have always felt that I have two sides: my professional side and my personal side. I've always had to toe the line working in sales because you want to create that connection with you customers without oversharing.

In my personal life my authentic self is a 27-year-old Disney obsessed, Harry Potter loving, book reading, Marvel watching, music listening, podcast binging, foodie who is more comfortable with routine and is just trying to figure out how to be an adult. I love pretty much anything that is purple or teal. I'm the friend you want on your side when it all goes sideways, and you need a plan to pick up the pieces. I am not the friend you come to if you want someone to feel sorry for you; I'll be sympathetic, but you are not allowed to give up.

In my professional life I am a 27-year-old sales consultant with a master's degree and a background in marketing. I must stay incredibly organized (even if the piles and chaos doesn't always reflect it), I focus better when listening to music or standing; I have no problem randomly going up to customers and giving my opinion on designs if I think it will help them later down the road. I'm good at negotiating and I am an incredibly driven, focused, and hard-working individual.

How does any of this relate to this article? So far in my career I never knew much about my bosses outside of where they worked. Of course, I knew a few things. Like my previous supervisor had a son in the military, was going back to school to get her associates and eventually her bachelors. That was only because she asked me what I knew about a program at Gardner-Webb and because she skipped lunch every Tuesday and Thursday so she could leave an hour early to go to class. I never really got to know my supervisors on a level that felt like their advice had less to do with the bottom line and more to do with me as a person.

I always looked for that person that would take me under their wing, mentor me and encourage me to on my way to the top. So far that hasn't happened, not in the way I thought it would. I have had a few friends that have been encouraging. One of my best friends started out as a coworker. She trained me at my first job right out of college and she is one of the people that encouraged me to go back to get my masters. I have another coworker who always pushed me to work on big projects and reminded me that sometimes you need be a little pushy when you work in sales.

When I read this article, a few light bulbs went off.
Light bulb #1: Being a business leader wasn't always synonymous being inauthentic; it's ensuring you are authentic about the right things at the right times.
​I always thought that there needed to be a think cinderblock wall separating personal and professional. From 9-6 I am this person and after that I am me. I have coworkers and customers that I get along with but most of the time they do not mingle with who I am outside of that 9-6 window. With that said, should I go around talking to my customers and coworkers about my absolute obsession with Disney and Marvel? Probably not, unless I have a Disney vacation designer come in who is looking to furnish her whole house while she is up in NC visiting her family. I spent maybe 15-20 minutes talking to her about her job as a vacation designer, my love for Disney, things I should do the next time I'm wanting to plan a trip to Disney, what I did wrong the last time I planned my trip and new attractions that she had heard whispers about. She ended up purchasing a lot of furniture, not the whole house, but it was a solid sale, and I wouldn't have gotten it without sharing more about my personal life.

Light bulb #2: We all have personal bias; you just need be careful in how it shows.

I currently work in sales at a boutique furniture company. My personal style leans towards, mid-century modern, softened lines, non-powered upholstery, and cool tone colors. If I tried to sell only that to every customer that walked in our door, I would be broke. The company I work for specializes in modern, power, European style furniture. We sell 43 different brands out of those about 7 of them fit my personal esthetic.

At one-point last year I had a month where probably 5-10 of my customers were having warranty issues with our biggest manufacturer (no I will not tell you which brand I will simply call it manufacturer A). I was so mad; I developed a bias towards this manufacturer A. I didn't want to sell it anymore. I didn't want to guide my customers towards this brand if they were just going to have a warranty issue and call and yell at me and my coworkers. We had another brand that fit the same esthetic and was at the same price point. However, customers specially came to our store looking for manufacturer A because it is such a large company. I had to monitor myself very closely; I didn't want to lose sales for our store and my paycheck simply because 5 of my customers out of the millions of customers manufacturer A has in a year had manufacturer defects. I continued to sale this manufacturer. It not the company I sale the most of but I know a lot about this company and how it works, and I am able to educate customers with only the facts throughout the buying process. Even if a customer leaves without buying I know that I have been authentic AND that my personal bias didn't sway their decision. I spoke with purpose, not emotion.
Light bulb #3: You don't always have to do it yourself.​The store I work for is a smaller boutique style furniture store. It may not seem that way because it takes of 26,000 sqft and has 4 different galleries, but in furniture world that's not a big store. Over the past two years of covid there have been ridiculous price increases due to logistic cost, supply chain cost and even fuel cost increasing at the manufacturer level that were passed on to retailers and eventually customers. This means that we had to reprice our store multiple times. When I say multiple, I mean 6-8 times per manufacturer within a year. With 43 manufacturers we were always repricing something. Somehow, I took this particularly heinous and tedious job on all by myself. Not because my coworkers didn't offer to help, but simply trying to coordinate this job with other people was a nightmare and I tend to live by the "I'll do it myself" philosophy. However recently it has taken a toll and my coworker finally just walked over to my desk and took the tags for one of our brands away. It was a weirdly eye-opening experience. For the past year she has worked there she has offered to help, but I always just said "I got it" or "you are busy I'll do it".

I have never been the one to ask for help. You can ask my family; I just never grew out of the "I do it" stage that children go through. I would rather get so angry that I am crying than ask someone to help me with a task that I know I can do.

This weirdly has never stopped me from asking the 'stupid questions' in my professional life, but if I know I can figure something out on my own I tend not to ask. If it's something I know that I can do no problem and I don't think people are going to do it, I do it because I want it done and over with. This week when she took the tags from me. Just one out of the three we need to get done this week. We had some unexpected glitches in our computer system this week that put us behind and we still haven't finished the price tags. I never would have finished both brands this week. I barely finished the one manufacturer, not because I wasn't diligently working on it, but because I had other things that needed to be done. Other deadlines that were more pressing, customers that were calling, people that were in the store demanding attention. A job that I had to do.

Know when to ask for help and admit you cannot do it all. I am still working on that one and will probably trying to master it my whole life. I think it's a problem most people have. If you admit you need help maybe someone will thing you can't do your job, that you aren't good enough. It's simply not true. Ask for help.

This article was short, but it did spark a lot of thinking, processing, and reflection on my part. It's interesting to see how 6 statements from different entrepreneurs can make you think. It made me reflect on myself and my career. Where it is currently, how I can use the information in moving forward and beginning to develop a more complete image of what I want my career to be. Did you find that any of the statements stuck with you? Did it spark some retrospection? If so let me know down below in the comments I would love to hear what your light bulb moment was. 

https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/good-bosses-show-their-human-side-but-what-if-the-boss-is/432340