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just had fun being myself as I walked through the KFC headquarters talking to whomever I met along the way about everything from the history of Colonel Sanders to what we do in our research kitchen.
    I’ve showed that video at my leadership seminars for years and it always gets a big laugh (at me, of course, not at my jokes). It certainly drives home the point about how easy it is to tell when someone isn’t being themselves. But more important, when I show it, I let everyone know how much I still hate seeing myself bomb like that. Being yourself means letting your weaknesses show too.
    Allowing yourself to be vulnerable can be hard enough for most of us, but in the business world, the idea of being yourself is further complicated by the fact that it’s also important to get along with all sorts of people while staying true to yourself. You obviously can’t just say to colleagues or customers, “This is me being myself, take it or leave it.” Not if you want to get ahead. Instead, you have to figure out how to be you in a way that broadens your appeal and impact versus turning people off or unnecessarily clashing with company culture.
    The CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, really struggled with this when she first came to the United States from India early in her career. “There were many times that I felt like a fish out of water,” she told me, “times that I said to myself, ‘Do I even fit in?’ ”
    Rather than completely change herself, Indra found ways to adapt that felt comfortable to her. One such way had to do with her lifelonglove of cricket. No one in this country followed the game, but they did follow baseball, another bat-and-ball sport. So she threw herself into baseball and into the local team, the New York Yankees, reading everything she could on the subject until she could comfortably talk about it. “Once I did that,” she said, “I could then say, ‘I really like this game and I like the Yankees,’ as opposed to pretending.”
    Nooyi could have learned about football or taken up golf in order to better fit in with her American colleagues, but that wouldn’t have suited her personality or her interests. At the same time, she didn’t just sit back and say, “I don’t care about any of these silly American pastimes. If the guys around here want to get to know me, they can ask me about myself.” Instead, she sought out ways to connect with people that suited both her and them. “Rather than completely change myself to be something I couldn’t live with, on the margin I tried to adapt and fit in, but in a way that made me comfortable.” It took work to figure out how to be herself in a new environment, but Indra did it in a way that was uniquely and authentically her.
MIND-SET CHECK
    Refer to the tool for choosing powerful versus limiting mind-sets on page 28. In each one of the chapters in this section, you will be asked to contemplate your mind-set in relation to the topic at hand. Ask yourself: Is my mind-set helping me be a better leader and get big things done? Or is it getting in the way of my success? Is there a more powerful way of thinking that I could adopt?
    “There is always room to grow and improve

and be a better me.”
    versus
    “I don’t need to change. I’m good enough just as I am.”
KNOW YOURSELF
    Part of what’s hard about being ourselves is we don’t always know exactly who we are, especially early in our careers. It takes time and experience to develop the confidence and knowledge you need to do this successfully.
    Early in my career, I worked with a lot of accomplished people with MBAs from Ivy League schools, whereas I had only a bachelor’s degree, and it wasn’t even in business; it was in journalism from the University of Missouri. I was different and I knew it, but it took a while before I had the confidence to admit it. As silly as it may seem, for years when conversation turned toward the subject of where people had earned their MBAs, I’d excuse myself