Blogs

Nuance in the meaning of AR

It we take the term literally from the two words in the name, it seems to contain two ideas. Authentic, and Relating.

So yes, the name has the word authentic in it. That's true, But it also includes the word relating. As my mentors explained this, the one idea offsets or balances the other idea. My authentic truth might very well be prickliness, but then the relating agenda asks me to temper that in service of the relationship.

So in this frame, AR is a way of showing up in relationship where these two impetuses are both included, and somehow balanced. Measured against each other.

BTW there is another way to understand the meaning of AR, and that's that it has nothing to do with the way i'm relating, and everything to do with a repeated set of structured practices that help shape over time my ability to relate, to communicate, and to manage emotion. But that is a topic for another day.

Inauthenticity as its own line of inquiry

If the idea is tempering my authentic state in service of the relationship, doesn't this open up the thought, isn't that being inauthentic?

I recently wrote about offering appreciation as a way of getting someones world, here.

In that post i gave this example:

What i didn't say, because it was off topic at the time, is that maybe i was actually bored out of my tree, maybe i was even mildly triggered by their wallowing.

Now if i had been truly and literally authentic, or in some way motivated by the dated philosophy of radical honesty, i might have said something like:

Now this would, in some schools of AR, (eg circling) qualify as by the book certified compliant AR, right? We owned our experience, we expressed desire without attachment. We respected their agency.

And yet, somehow, intuitively, its doesn't seem like the optimum solution. Right?

So, instead, maybe I have the foresight to remember "is my share in service of connection". Maybe I notice my desire to contribute some co-regulation. I maybe even latch onto a glimmer of an idea that just, maybe, leaning into, and modelling appreciation in that exact moment might actually help create the outcome that i want. And along the way we might actually build connection?

But wait there's more. Maybe, as well, i, as a side effect, get to self-regulate, because giving appreciation just feels so darn good. Instead of their focus on the negative bringing to the surface, in me, whatever old unresolved traumas i have around, say, not getting what i needed, this all of it, gets nipped neatly in the bud.

So here we have it, this idea of acting against, or opposite to, our natural inclination. It says: there is value in not being authentic sometimes. If my natural inclination is to speak in a way that adds more dysregulation both in them and me, how is that useful? The question is: it might be authentic, but is it useful?

So, here is a pair of ted talks that directly inspired the title of this post.

The Importance Of Being Inauthentic: Mark Bowden at TEDxToronto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zpf8H_Dd40

The Authenticity Paradox | Professor Herminia Ibarra | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIjI3TmEzrs

In the first, Bowden humorously tumbles a number of very apropos ideas to our work (in a slightly overwhelming way in my opinion) to make the point that sometimes its more helpful to the relationship to be inauthentic.

While he takes his time getting to his point, along the way he talks about the negativity bias, our fear of strangers, nonverbals, neuroception and many other things. Its worth watching twice.

The second ted talk is the exact same idea from a PhD. ie. that there's a difference between authentic and helpful. A difference between identifying with how we find ourselves truthfully right now, which is after all just the product of the sum of our past experiences, and identifying more with the person we want to become, identifying with our aspiration to learn grow and heal.