Everyone’s heard the song. We don’t show our true colors often enough. We generally save them for a select few and even then we choose the colors we feel ready to share and leave the others aside. It could be interesting to ask ourselves why we do this. Why do we willingly share the bright happy colors and try to hide the darker colors we’re less proud of? And why do we avoid facing those darker colors ourselves and quickly try to slap a more “acceptable” color on top of it? Whether you are my colleague, my friend, my boss, or the love of my life—show me your true colors and I will respect you. Show me the color of your joy, your enthusiasm, your pride, your serenity. And, please, show me as well the color of your disappointment, your embarrassment, your frustration, your anger, your jealousy or your fear because those are also your colors. You are bright and dark, just as I am. How boring our communication would be if there were no contrasts!

I finished coaching a man yesterday who has been working on one of his dark colors with my support over the past 9 months. The first day I met him he said, “I’m full of self-doubt.” I agreed to work with him because of the courage he showed me that day. Here he was: 46 years old, a manager of 60 people, been in the same “psychological pattern” for years, suddenly wanting to place the pattern on the table and try to figure out how to work on it. So many people would turn away or attempt to cover it up instead. Yesterday he said that he felt like he had been wearing a backpack full of bricks all these years and now it’s no longer there. He also said he had the impression that the pieces had come together somehow. This is Bach to my coaching ears. He will be a manager of integrity now: the root of that word is the Latin integer meaning wholeness or soundness.