The importance of authenticity
June 2, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Pursuit of Happiness
Being authentic often gets confused with being honest. I’ll agree it would be hard to be authentic and dishonest at the same time, but they aren’t really opposites. Authenticity is more about intent and motivation.Those are subtle but powerful aspects in any conversation, sale, or interaction.
A salesman giving a hard sell usually doesn’t get the sale because the words say that the motivation is you, the customer, but the actions say just the opposite. Just about every time I go to Costco someone pressures me to upgrade the basic membership to the one with a higher fee with promises about how much money I would get back. One time a woman walked all the way out to my car with me selling for all she was worth. A marketing expert could probably tell me the underlying factors in an instant. What I know is that with all the constant hard selling I don’t trust that there isn’t more in this exchange for Costco than there is for me. They lost the potential sale and my trust by not being authentic.
I’ve noticed that people are beginning to feel this way about “free” e-books online as well. Often labeled as manifestos they’re popping up everywhere. And while yes, they are free and nobody is lying as far as I can tell, the motivation is becoming increasingly suspect as links take you to sites that are raving about the author’s site (because they’re mentioned or because they think it’s good?) The few that I’ve read felt like someone had enticed me with promises of content that did not deliver and I think it was because the intent was not to help me but to help someone more personally connected by engaging my time. If I’m investing my time, it isn’t really free.
The problem with authenticity is that it’s hard to spot the lack in yourself as well as in others. It’s perfectly normal to imitate ‘experts’ when we are learning something new or feel less confident in ourselves, but at some point you have to stop and assess whether you are being authentic in continuing as is. The expert may well be being authentic. We’ve all seen someone ‘work the room’ that is a genuine extrovert and natural salesperson but if I, as someone more naturally inclined to small groups and familiar faces, were to mimic their behavior exactly it would be a painful and unproductive exercise for all concerned. That doesn’t mean I can’t network effectively it just means it looks very different when I’m being authentic and effective.
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