Authentic Leadership: Bring Your Whole Self to Work (Udemy.com)
How to Build Trust, Inspire Performance, and Create Strong Relationships with Your Team
Created by: Mike Robbins
Last updated September 2025
What you will learn
- Identify what authenticity truly is and why it’s so important in building trust
- Discover the importance of psychological safety and how to create it for your team
- Expand your ability to operate with authenticity
- Recognize the essential difference between recognition and appreciation (and why appreciation drives higher performance)
- Tap into appreciation as a fuel for productivity, loyalty, and engagement
- Enhance your emotional intelligence in order to connect more deeply with your team
- Foster a growth mindset to help your team embrace change and learning
- Create a championship team by focusing on team culture and dynamic
How it compares
Against the other 230 rated Udemy courses in Leadership & Management on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 69% of them
- Reviews7,436#36 of 231 by number of reviews
- Length1.6 hoursshorter than 58% of them
- Last updatedSeptember 2025more recently than 53% of them
Course Description
In today’s work environment, the lines between our professional and personal lives are blurred more than ever before. Whatever is happening to us outside of our workplace – whether stressful, painful, or joyful – follows us into work as well. We may think we have to keep these realities under wraps and act as if we have it all together. However, we can work better, lead successfully, and be more engaged and inspiring if – instead of trying to hide who we are – we show up fully and authentically.
I'm Mike Robbins, a speaker and executive coach, and your instructor for this course. I've spent more than 20 years researching, writing, and speaking about leadership, teamwork, and high-performance. My clients have ranged from Google to Citibank, from the US Department of labor to the San Francisco Giants. From small startups in Silicon Valley to family-owned businesses in the Midwest. From what I've seen and studied over the past two decades, I believe that for us to thrive as leaders and to have the kind of impact we truly want to have on others, it’s essential to lead with authenticity.
Authentic leadership is about acknowledging that we’re all vulnerable, imperfect human beings doing the best we can. It means having the courage to take risks, speak up, have compassion, ask for help, connect with others in a genuine way, and allow ourselves to be truly seen.
In this course, I outline the five key principles from my book, Bring Your Whole Self to Work, that we can use to approach our own work in the spirit of openness and humanity, and to help the people we work with feel safe enough to do the same, so that the teams and organizations we’re a part of can truly succeed.
In this course, you will:
Identify what authenticity truly is and why it’s so important in building trust
Discover the importance of psychological safety and how to create it for your team
Expand your ability to operate with authenticity
Recognize the essential difference between recognition and appreciation (and why appreciation drives higher performance)
Tap into appreciation as a fuel for productivity, loyalty, and engagement
Enhance your emotional intelligence in order to connect more deeply with your team
Foster a growth mindset to help your team embrace change and learning
Create a championship team by focusing on team culture and dynamic
I encourage you to complete the activities and action steps in this course to put the ideas you're learning into practice immediately.
If you're ready to lead with authenticity and courage, join me in this course!
Instructor Details
- 4.6 Rating
7,436 Reviews
Mike Robbins
In today’s fast-moving world of relentless change, hybrid work, and constant disruption, organizations don’t just need sharper strategies, they need cultures where people trust one another, collaborate effectively, and perform at their best.
For 25+ years, leadership, culture, and teamwork expert Mike Robbins, CSP, has helped some of the world’s most respected organizations build environments where people perform at their best because they feel safe, valued, connected, and inspired to contribute at their highest level.
He’s the author of five books, We’re All in This Together, Bring Your Whole Self to Work, Be Yourself Everyone Else Is Already Taken, Nothing Changes Until You Do, and Focus on the Good Stuff, which have been translated into fifteen languages.
He hosts the popular podcast, We're All in This Together, and has delivered three TEDx talks viewed more than 2.3 million times. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, ABC News, NPR, and other national media outlets.
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Reviews
By Kirti Prakash on 8/3/2026
Excellent course, highly recommend to everyone. Mike is spot on: 'Vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare!' Role play with AI is simply awesome component in this course. Getting to do actual role play with actual feedback from AI is next level stuff. Thanks for putting this together.
By Brian Withrow on 10/27/2025
I'm really enjoying this lesson about being authentic. It's refreshing to explore how embracing our true selves can positively impact our relationships and professional interactions. The content resonates with me because it encourages openness, honesty, and vulnerability in a way that feels empowering rather than risky. Learning how authenticity builds trust and connection is both inspiring and practical, and it's motivating me to reflect on how I show up in different areas of my life.
By Anonymized User on 8/9/2024
It was fascinating to understand the mechanics the fundamentals really that require a combined effort to achieve the successful leadership abilities. This was invigorating and actionable.
By Habibu Kibongo on 2/28/2024
It is very useful for leaders to develop a good championship team at work but it will be better if you add some questions at the end of the course so that to remind ourselves on what learnt through out the course.
By Twalane Daisy Migiro on 5/22/2023
Very insightful for me, I am yet to be in a leadership role in the workplace but there are places in my personal life where I am looked at to be one where I think the principles in this course are very applicable. I look forward to utilizing them in the positions I aspire to hold professionally and as an entrepreneur. The content has helped me re-examine my mindset and pointed me to doing that often, similarly for my approach overall to various matters and the application of mindfulness. Thank you
By Kelly Soprovich on 6/5/2022
Course was delivered well and in a very relatable way. Appreciated the section on Appreciation because I agree that gets missed a lot in our busy day to day work life if you don't focus on it. I like the explanation on the difference between Recognition and Appreciation. I think recognition is important and I think that is always something that we hear about but after this I think people mostly just want to feel appreciated.
By Denise Beneby on 3/21/2022
I thoroughly enjoyed this course from the self-assessment to the appreciation seat and cannot wait to try out some of the activities. There are so many take aways and I love the quotes, especially the last quote about vision without action.
By Anonymized User on 6/9/2021
Content was easy to understand. I like how the instructor broke down the topic into a few key sections and gave enough details in each forms to walk away with a better and deeper knowledge that collectively helped me understand the broader topic of authentic leadership. Tips and resources were helpful, practical, and relevant.
By Anonymized User on 4/10/2021
Very easy to understand and really works out simple, everyday premises that we think we think we are masters of. This course will probably be difficult for those who haven’t done any shadow-work in their lives! For those who have, it’s a great educational experience.
By Linda Lee on 1/14/2021
Thank you, Mike Robbins for the great presentation on the subject matter of, "Authentic Leadership: Bring You Whole Self To Work.'' It was thorough, thought provoking, illuminating and useful. Thank you for sharing your career (baseball) .Why Is This Happening For Me ? Moment. It was an AH HA Pause...Job Well Done! Thank you !---LL
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 92 / 100






