Be Yourself at Work: The Work of Writing It For years I watched people perform at work. I watched leaders dim their light to fit the mold and talented people shrink themselves into an org chart. It cost them their energy, their creativity, and their sense of belonging. Something had to shift, not just for individuals but for how we talk about leadership and culture altogether. This book wasn't meant to be another leadership playbook. It was about naming something I'd felt for years but hadn't seen articulated: that ending burnout, building human-first teams, and creating workplaces where people actually thrive all run through authenticity. Not the polished kind that comes after you've figured yourself out, but the messy, still-becoming kind. The three pillars in the book came from real life. Emotional Optimism came from watching what happens when someone leads with hope instead of fear. Emotional Bravery came from every hard conversation I've had or facilitated, the ones where vulnerability opened doors that politeness kept locked. Emotional Efficiency came from learning that clarity and compassion aren't opposites; they amplify each other. The hard part was writing it so people could feel it, not just read it. That meant being vulnerable in ways that scared me, bringing in my own story as the teenager people said thought too much with her heart, and trusting that it mattered. It meant skipping the corporate polish and asking instead what was actually true. Twenty-five years of building teams, coaching leaders, and listening to people describe what was breaking in their workplaces gave me patterns and insight, thousands of conversations that shaped how I understand humans at work. The book became my attempt to turn that into something people could use on Monday morning. It became a USA TODAY bestseller. People told me it changed how they showed up. Teams used it to rethink their culture. The response confirmed what I suspected all along: people are tired of pretending and want permission to be themselves, along with language for why it matters. Writing this book was really about stepping fully into what I already knew. It meant testing my own three pillars on the page, choosing authenticity when I could have played it safer, and trusting that my voice, heart-centered, direct, grounded in both research and real experience, was enough. Then it was putting it into the world and watching what happened when people gave themselves permission to listen.
