Dianne WhitfordMilitant authenticity is when you have such a strong allegiance to “you being you” that you get in your own way. Or worse, you have a negative impact on those around you or their respect for you. I have always been a strong advocate for people being themselves, and I still strongly believe that. I also believe that we have choices about when and how to express that authenticity, and we can do it in a way that still allows us to be present to the needs and feelings of those around us.
Referenced in this episode:
- The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity | Adam Grant | NY Times
- Book Review: Option B
- Coffee, Grit and Inspiration on Facebook
- Coffee, Grit and Inspiration on Instagram
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Transcript
Hey everybody. It is Dianne Whitford and this is your weekly (mostly) Coffee Break podcast where we are making personal development accessible one episode at a time. This week I came across an article by Adam Grant who is the coauthor of the book. Option B with Sheryl Sandberg and I reviewed it a couple months ago, a few months ago. I think. I’ll link that in the description for you to check out if you want to. But that’s kind of what clued me in on this article and then the title of the article was authenticity, the Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity. And I’ve always thought of authenticity as being something totally, beneficial. Something that all of us should strive for. And so I was really interested to see what he meant by, there could be harmful authenticity as well. Reading through it was really interesting because it presents the idea that authenticity is not always, you know, being, being severely allegiant to our authentic self or whatever is not always going to help us.
In fact, sometimes it could get in the way, get in our own way and do damage to people around us as well. There’s a lot of hype around being authentic, especially in the last few years. You know, especially in the workplace, everybody’s looking for the authentic manager and teammates that are authentic. And you know, it’s all about be who you are and be yourself at home and at work. And I’ve seen even said those things myself many times that you should be the same person at work as you are at home. And this article kind of gave me a little bit of a different view of that. So authenticity, I mean the word itself means genuine or real. And I’ve always thought of it like the things you think and believe, the things you say, and the things you do should all be aligned. So if you’re, if you’re saying something that doesn’t match what you think, or if you’re acting in ways that don’t support what you believe, then you’re not being authentic.
And what this article pointed out is that you can choose. So even when we’re being our most authentic selves, even when we’re living our most authentic life, we can choose what to share and when to share it. It doesn’t mean that we’re not being true to ourselves if we don’t say everything that comes through our mind or if we don’t express every emotion that we feel. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re not being authentic. At its base. Authenticity is all about you, right? It’s how you express yourself. It’s whether you are acting in ways that are consistent with what you believe and what you think it’s about you and how you come across. Where this gets in the way is if you have a low level of concern for other people, then you come across as only being worried about yourself. Right? And that’s true. Whether you’re trying to be authentic or not.
That low level of concern, if it’s, if your authenticity is not paired with empathy, then you run the risk of coming across as self-absorbed, self-serving, narcissistic, whatever that is. So in the article, Mr. Grant talks about people that go on job interviews and about how when you go on a job interview, the people who had a great track record who had a stellar resume, confessing to their limitations or being real about their shortcomings had less of an impact than those who did the same thing but did not have that stellar resume that, that, that good track record. Same thing with using self deprecating humor. You know, when women use self deprecating humor, it can come across a little bit differently than when a man does it. And I, I think that just has to do with preconceived ideas about men. And I don’t think it’s true in every single case.
And I’m not trying to make gender equality statements or anything like that. I’m just saying that in certain situations, joking about yourself, joking about your shortcomings, being totally open and honest about your shortcomings can backfire if you don’t have a great track record, if you don’t have that proof that you do know what you’re, what you’re doing and what’s going on, it’s almost like you’re joking about something that isn’t true. Right. And that’s why people laugh. So, so you have to be careful that you’re not joking about shortcomings and undermining your strengths. I mean I use, I use self deprecating humor a lot, I feel like, to kind of set people at ease. It makes people feel good that you can laugh at yourself and, and I don’t think I’ve thought about before the impact that that can have. So if I, if I make a joke about, gosh, I’m not, I’m not great at, at relating to people, so I don’t, not really sure why I’m on this project or you know, if I said something along those lines that plants the idea in people’s heads, then why are you here if you can’t do this?
You know? And so maybe people lose respect for me when I say something like that. You can, there’s ways that I can sort of poke fun at myself without planting the idea in people’s heads that I don’t know what I’m doing or I, under, you know, undercutting my own competence. Well, something I thought interesting in that article as well is that the idea of going, showing up to work like you, you do at home is narcissistic. And the idea and the article is saying, you know, well, what about being interested in other people? And I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I think you can be an authentic person and also be concerned about and, and focused on other people. And I think the difference there is being true to your values. Being an authentic person is important and one of your values should be care for other people, right?
So when you’re, when you’re there and you’re expressing yourself and you’re doing all your authentic stuff, if being empathetic to others is part of your values, then you’re balancing that self examination, that self-expression with a care for other people and an interest in those around you. One example that came to mind is because right now my husband and I are in the lockdown just like most of the world and we’re rewatching Scrubs, the Scrubs series. And if you’re not familiar with Scrubs, it’s, it’s, it follows a group of doctors in a hospital and it’s a comedy. It was the, I forget if they get switched channels while it was on TV, you can get it on Amazon Prime right now. But the one of the doctors is super abrasive and his name is Dr. Cox. And he’s always about, you know, saying about how he is who he is and he’s not ever going to change and you take it or leave it.
And, and he is so flagrantly, aggressively authentic to who he is that he alienates everybody. Everybody. And he doesn’t care. And a lot of that is because he is a very authentic person that has no empathy. And so he’s, he’s not interested in self-improvement. He’s not interested in doing anything better. He doesn’t care most of the time they show his soft spots sometimes, but most of the time he doesn’t care about the impact he has on those around him because he is so focused on him being him. And, and that’s it. And so you look at that kind of an example, you see, it’s not always the best to be so focused on who you are and how you’re expressing yourself and that you have the opportunity to express yourself in the way that you like, that you lose sight of how you may be impacting others.
And so you have to balance that authenticity with empathy. Something that Mr. Grant wrote in the article is that authenticity without boundaries, without drawing a line around what you will and won’t share and when you’ll share it and all of that kind of stuff, just to let it all spill out is ultimately selfish. It’s not something you’re doing for other people. It’s something you’re doing for yourself. When you’re letting yourself spill out there all over the place because that’s who you are and you’re being authentic, regardless of the impact it might have on other people, then ultimately you’re acting selfishly. And so it’s not an argument…I struggled with this a lot because I’m very much in favor of people being able to be themselves. I don’t think, pretending to be somebody that you’re not. I don’t think that when you go to work and you have to show up in a different way in order to be accepted at work is…I’m not a proponent of that.
I’m not a proponent of telling people, just play the game and be who be who it is. I want people to be themselves. But I also want people to constantly look at themselves and say, where can I improve? And, and when you, one of the ways in which you might not even realize the impact you’re having on others is when you think about how devoted you are to being you, and does that edge other people out? Does it have an impact on other people that you’re not aware of? Does it mean that when you’re so focused on expressing yourself that you’re not thinking about other people? I remember when I was just first starting out in my career, I had short, spiky hair and it was dyed platinum blonde and I have a bunch of tattoos and I didn’t really understand how to dress professionally.
And at that time in my life, I was all about me being me. And I had, I got a lot of feedback. You know, that you are…some of it I still have trouble with, like one of the things I was told is that I’ll never go anywhere looking like I do. Or, you know, I’m a punk rock princess and, and I’m never going to go anywhere like that. And that’s frustrating for me in a lot of reasons. But back then it was all about, you know, I, you know, if you don’t like how I look then, then you know, you should be judging me based on my capabilities. And I still believe that’s true. I still believe it’s true that the way I look should have nothing to do with how well I do my job. But how well I can do my job does in some jobs, and sometimes, is influenced by how seriously you’re taken by the people around you.
And so in that case, me wanting to dress the way I wanted to dress with my funky hair and all that stuff just gets in my way and it’s me getting in my own way. And it’s not because everybody else needs to change to accept me. And it’s not that I need to change who I am in order to be accepted. I just have to understand that there’s, there’s some times and ways when being authentic is helping me. And there’s some times when it’s, when I’m getting in my own way and I need to make the decision for myself. Do I want to make this change or do this thing differently so that I can get somewhere else with my career? If that’s important to me, I might want to think about doing that. If it’s not important to me, then, you know, keep me in punk rock princess.
And ultimately I grew out of the, the whole platinum, short, spiky hair, thing. And so I don’t, obviously. I started to dress different ways, mostly because I got older. but what I, but what I finally came to understand is that that militant, aggressive, authenticity because I was so, I was so aggressively interested in making sure that I expressed myself in the way that I wanted to, to do it is that I was not thinking about the longer term. I was not thinking about the impact that I was having on the people around me and how the way I chose to express myself was influencing others’ respect for me. And so, uh, because my job is important to me and because I wanted to be successful in my career, I was able to make some changes that still allow me to be myself but also get out of my own way a little bit and allow me to be a little bit more successful at work.
This topic is really hard for me because I have always been, be yourself, be yourself, be yourself. I tell that to my team. I try to live it myself because I, I just think it’s really important that you shouldn’t have to pretend to be somebody that you’re not and I think that ultimately the choice, what you want to do in your life, what you want to be successful at, how the things that you have to do in order to be successful at what you’re doing. It’s all personal choice. If I was the kind of person that wanted to where, you know, that having pink hair was super, super important to me because of who I am and I want to be able to express who I am, then maybe this job isn’t the right one for me. If that’s really important to me, then I have a choice to make.
Right? I think we get so caught up in how I look is who I am. And I don’t think that that is true. You know, whether I have platinum blonde hair or pink hair or red hair or whatever, still the same person and I still have the same values and I still feel the same things. And so I struggle with the idea of I have to look this way or dress this way because that’s who I am. I don’t think that how I dress or how I look impacts the person that I am inside. So that’s kind of a, I kind of rambled a little bit today. I hope that’s all right. I um, I might have more thoughts on authenticity later. I might have more thoughts on it later. That’s what I got for right now. So over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be doing a couple of podcasts with guests. I’m going to ask Emily and John to join me again. And then I have another friend, Carter, that I’m going to also invite to join me. So that’s a little bit a heads up on what’s coming up in the next few weeks. I hope everyone is staying safe and well. As always, I just, I think about all of you guys, every time I’m sitting here and talking into the camera or just talking into my microphone, I think about who are the people that are listening and are they doing okay. And just hoping that all of you guys are all right. If you’d like to sign up for our mailing list, you can do that. It is www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. If you’d like, just reach out. Tell me how you’re doing. Tag me maybe on Facebook or Instagram. I have an Instagram account and a Facebook account for Coffee, Grit and Inspiration. I’ll put those in the links as well. I’d love to see your photos of what you’re doing on lockdown. I just, I would love to see all that stuff. So hope everyone’s staying safe. Well, entertaining yourselves as much as you can. Don’t forget, this will be over someday. Will be over someday. This too shall pass. It will. It’s going to be tough, but we will get through, so hope you guys have a great week and I will talk to you soon. Bye now.
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