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Are you authentic—or not?

March 9, 2010 | Author: Allyn Horne | Filed under: The Networking Habit

The Oxford English Dictionary defines authenticity as being in accordance with fact, as being true in substance; and as being what is professed in origin or authorship, as being genuine.

Without the help of a dictionary, the term is hard to define, but most of us know an authentic person when we meet one. At the very least, we can usually spot an inauthentic or ingenuine someone a mile away.

And, frankly, without authenticity, your network won’t trust you. So let’s dive deeper.

Seth Godin, on the other hand, connects authenticity to doing, not just to being.  “Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not ‘being’ who you are,” he writes in his blog. “That’s because ‘being’ is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. … Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.”

So what might inauthentic acts look like? How about taking credit for work that’s not yours, or offering to help a colleague and then not following up? Maybe you failed to engage with a person or issue at hand, or said one thing but then did another? Perhaps you missed a deadline without notification or warning the other parties involved, or left a colleague alone in the rain when a storm blew through the office?

Inauthenticity also shows itself in more subtle ways, such as with offers of false flattery, consenting to something you really don’t want to do, or pressuring others into doing things that they’ve told you they don’t want to do.

Does that sound like you? More important, would your colleagues say that sounds like you? Inauthenticity is a career killer: if you’re inauthentic then you’ll be inconsistent. And, as Seth Godin writes, “if you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get caught.”

Stew Friedman over at the HBR blogs wrote a great piece on how you can foster a greater sense of authenticity; it’s especially useful if you feel that you’ve been less than authentic—and that your network might know it. Although his article focuses on authentic leadership, the steps he lays out are—with a few UpMo tweaks and refinements—well-suited to you and how you can illustrate authenticity to your network, as well.

  1. Put yourself out there. Share with your mentor or trusted members of your network three critical events that shaped your life and values. As Friedman says, writing about and discussing these events “enhance[s] your capacity to be real, to act now in a way that’s consistent with your core values. Effective leaders,” he writes (although we would exchange ‘leaders’ with ‘networkers’ or ‘career professionals’) “use their imaginations to connect the actual stories of their pasts with the hoped-for stories of their futures.”
  1. Picture in your mind a vision of something you’d like to be doing in the near future. Maybe you’re sitting at the head of a large conference table, wearing your finest suit, in a bright windowed office, with staff hanging on to your every word. Or perhaps you’re standing on a platform, looking down at your smoothly running, profitable manufacturing concern, feeling proud that you’ve accomplished your goal. In either case, explains Friedman, “it must be a compelling image of an achievable future; pulling on the heartstrings, a picture you can see, realistic while stretching limits, and out there in time.”
  1. Now begin to ACT as if you’re creating that future. And as you act in concert with that future, your network will view you as real because, as Friedman explains, you’ll be “playing out [your] own history in a way that makes sense…[your] public persona and aspirations [will] fit as a coherent self-presentation.”  And that will make it—and you—authentic, and easy to trust and believe.

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