By Jie Wang, Tae-Yeol Kim, Amanuel Tekleab and Brad Gilbreath

Self-verification is an important part of our daily lives, and involves a desire to be genuine and to have others view us in a way that is consistent with our own self-image. Creating a stable self-view is how most of us make sense of our existence, which helps in planning our future actions and decision-making processes.

Stable self-views also have a marked effect on our workplace behaviour and performance, and have been linked to many positive employee outcomes, including higher job satisfaction, organisational commitment, personal wellbeing and overall performance. The inverse holds true – when we don’t feel aligned with our ‘genuine self’, our work tends to suffer.

A recent study we conducted addresses a gap in self-verification research, as little is known about how self-verification perceptions —the extent to which we feel that we are known and understood by others – impacts our ever-shifting idea of ‘who we are’, and how this ultimately affects our work. We assessed the importance of perceived organisational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS) (i.e., how much an individual believes their organisation and direct supervisors support and value them) and discovered that:

• Both POS and PSS relate positively towards employees’ self-verification perceptions.
• Higher self-verification perceptions were significantly associated with positive emotional responses such as higher work enjoyment and lower levels of distress and anger in the workplace.
• Employees with high proactive personalities (i.e., those who are less constrained by situational forces and more willing to try to change their environment) had their self-verification perceptions significantly enhanced by POS, while simultaneously reducing the effectiveness of PSS.

Ours is the first study where the direct effects of POS and PSS on self-verification perceptions have been empirically tested. Our findings show that a supportive work environment has a direct and positive effect when it comes to making employees feel understood and valued. Overall, employees working for a supportive organisation (with supportive supervisors) will likely feel more comfortable in revealing their true selves, thereby gaining higher self-verification perceptions and enjoying the positive emotional impact that this brings.

It is clear that organisations should be striving to create the optimal conditions to make their employees feel supported at every level. The ‘proactive personality level’ of a given employee is clearly an important moderating factor that should feature into this strategy. Employees with low proactive personalities need their supervisors to play a more active supporting role in their daily work: listening to their opinions and self-disclosures, etc. Meanwhile, high proactive personalities are less reliant on their supervisors to help them feel self-verified, but do need to feel that their organisation as a whole understands them, sees them, values them and supports their daily work and future prospects.

To appeal to both proactive personality types, organisations should aim to explicitly foster employee well-being. Specifically, human resource managers should develop programmes (e.g., trainings, upward feedback) to encourage leaders to provide care and support to their subordinates. Increasing leaders’ understanding of self-verification (and its benefits) should also be an explicit goal, as this helps everyone across the organisation understand the fundamental importance of feeling like one’s ‘true self’ when at work.

This article refers to a study entitled “The interplay between perceived support and proactive personality: Effects on self-verification perceptions and emotions” published in The International Journal of Human Resource Management here.

Jie Wang is a Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Nottingham University Business School China. Tae-Yeol Kim is the Philips Chair and Professor of Management at CEIBS. Amanuel Tekleab is a Professor of Management at the Mike Ilitch School of Business, Wayne State University. Brad Gilbreath is an Associate Professor at the Hasan School of Business, Colorado State University.