Blogs
Authenticity deconstructed
Last year i reviewed a pair of ted talks that toyed with the value of being inauthentic. Because this is a frequently asked question in the project, it now feels worth another pass. It comes up especially in the context of giving feedback which we continue to explore the many nuances of. It also relates to my personal decision to walk away from the term AR.
Bowden's talk is plain language, light, witty, and stands well enough alone. If you haven't watched it yet, thats highly recommended.
Instead today i want to go through Ibarra's talk more slowly, to pick it apart. Being an academic there is some nuance and richness hiding amongst her words.
A choice of definitions
The most... common way we define authenticity, is being true to yourself. But that begs the question which self, your old self, the past, today's self, the future? And does being authentic condemn you to being as you always have been? Of course not.
Ibarra weaves into her presentation a story of a colleague who is very much a numbers person, and who is resisting a more relatable way of communicating. Of tailoring her message to her audience. She considers that being a motivational storyteller is not her authentic self. She does not want to become like those 'idiots' who are all form and no substance.
A second way we define authenticity is being sincere, saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Now, as it turns out the word sincere has a really interesting origin. It comes from two Latin roots sine without, and cera wax, without wax. And it comes from the days of ancient Rome where it had become common practice for statue merchants to hide any flaws in their statues with wax. The more scrupulous merchants, the ones who didn't want to be dishonest, would hang a sign outside their shops saying sine cer, they were sincere.
Her colleague, being trained in data, imagines that it is her data that is sincere, ungarnished. It does not need to be dressed up. That the numbers should speak for themself. Ibarra calls this the authenticity paradox. Her colleague was essentially facing a trade-off between being herself, and doing what it takes to be effective. You can not do both. It's one or the other. What got you here, may not get you to where you want to go.
A third definition is being true to your values... Where, say you define being yourself in terms of the skills, competencies and values that got you here... You might want to have... more impact, but you're... afraid you're going to have to sacrifice your values, your integrity. You don't want [to be not] sincere... So, the whole situation evokes a version of yourself that is at your most conservative, at your most cautious. Which is neither authentic, nor accomplishing what it is that you want to accomplish. But you stick to it because you feel morally justified in being authentic.
My apologies to the professor for heavily truncating her quotes. In the interest of clarity, you understand. By the way this material is all covered in chapter four of her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader. Under the sections aptly titled 'Too much myself' and 'The trouble with authenticity'.
Origin of the word
The definition of authenticity... comes from the Greek word authentikos which originally meant, that which you do with your own hands... The humanistic psychologists... saw authenticity not as a trait that is something that you either have or you don't have, but the outcome of a process of becoming your own person, a lifelong process of learning about yourself.
Hands are instruments of doing, not of being. However I fact-checked her definition, and it appears that the word 'hand' doesn't actually literally feature in the etymology. The 'with my own hands' being more of a folk usage or understanding. The Greek authentikos, from authentes, is documented as just meaning one who acts on their own authority, or is master of oneself.
While etymologists debate how the 'hands' part crept into folklore, they prefer a derivation that is more broadly "one's own doing". The root part auto means "self" and the last part relates to "doing".
Wiktionary describes how the journey from greek, through latin, to old french and then into middle english, all starts with the greek authentes which means something like 'perpetrator', 'ruler', or 'authorised'. This speaks to autonomy and agency. Someone who does a thing, and does it on their own initiative, with their full power and authority behind it.
So i am satisfied that the semantic heart of authentic, is not 'being self', but 'acting by self'. One who acts from themself. Not a trait, but acting from your own agency, and so inherently a practice.
Interestingly, and as a side note, the 'perpetrator' framing might even go so far as implying that the greek didn't require the action to be honourable, just an action that was of your own choice.
Anyway, acting by my own authority is very different to Being myself. Be yourself is passive and backward-looking, it points you at what already exists. Act by your own authority is active and forward-looking, it puts agency and choice at the centre, which connects neatly to both Ibarra's aspirational self and Bowden's argument that consciously adopted behaviour is what truly defines us.
Implications
In this respect we can also see this as a question of identity. Do i define myself as the sum of my legacy parts, the person that the world programmed me to be. Or do i want instead to define myself as being more about my aspirations, the ways i want to show up. The things i want to do and see happen. The way i want to be.
Combining both talks we get, choosing which self i want to be true to. Bowden gives us, my authentic instincts will make me indifferent to most people. Ibarra gives us authenticity is not passively being, it is about being self-authoring.
This is a very important reframe. And, turns out, it is a recognised issue with the word, and its known as the authenticity paradox.
To finish up, all we need to touch on is this line that is slipped quietly into the middle of the talk, in a way that is almost camouflaged:
Now... remember what's involved, learning means doing stuff that doesn't feel very comfortable because you don't know how to do it yet.
Yes! Being authentic by choosing how i want to show up asks me to author my life, to decide if my old habits and ways of being still serve me. Then figuring out in terms of my desire and agency what i want to bring to the table, and knowing that this shift will involve some sweat.
This means recognising the gap between where i am, what i was taught, and where i want to go. The difference amounts to a demand on my nervous system to change and to adapt. Change is hard, it's metabolically expensive, it's biologically taxing, it's risky. If i get it wrong, and misjudge it, i could literally die. What works, is the devil i know. Bank's don't run 20 year old mainframes for no reason. The consequences of an overly enthusiastic system update are severe.
In this way authenticity = change = courage = vulnerability.
And perhaps most importantly of all, is the related notion, that to resource this change requires safety, and that means co-regulation and support. That is why we are here, having this important conversation, together.
Note that views expressed in blogs do not necessarity reflect the views of the Project. They are the blog authors version of truth.
