| Services to Leaders Coaching Essay: Authenticity |
| Authenticity: A Learning Approach (c) 2007-10 by Angus Cunningham President, Authentix Coaches angusc@authentixcoaches.com |
| Last updated on: 100317 |
| Authentix Coaches |
| Consumers and clients are increasingly demanding the quality of authenticity from organizations. Employees are also looking for authenticity from their leaders, as are recruits from their prospective employers, purchasers from those trying to sell to them, salesmen interested in the needs of their prospects, investors dependent on the people who direct or lead the organizations in which they invest, bosses from their employees, and lonely people desperate for dependable companionship. And authenticity exchanged amongst colleagues, friends, and family members is, of course, a paramount expectation. What then is authenticity? There's no simple answer for authenticity means different things to different people. Following, however, are some reflections on the elements of meaning evoked by the word "authenticity". I hope they will stimulate further understanding of an issue in which realization of satisfying and productive relationships of all kinds is increasingly at stake. Both the adjective "authentic" -- from which the word "authenticity" is derived -- and the noun "author" begin with the same sound, namely that of the word "awe". Should we conclude from this that authenticity is a quality of energy reminiscent of what we feel when we experience some person, event, thing, or idea as awesome? When we refer to someone as the author of a document, or sometimes as the author of a deed, we are recognizing as present in them the power to initiate or originate -- whether we consider that power to have been used admirably, legitimately, or disgracefully. We also speak of an authority requiring authentication of an identity before the authority will be ready to issue, for example, a driver's licence, a passport, a franchise, a mandate, or a certificate. |
These ideas help me become aware of the meaning I attach to the word "authenticity". They lead me to conclude that authenticity is the quality by which one senses that some existent or idea is "an original" or that some person is remarkably individual or that some expression is intimately drawn from a certain person's experience or that some behaviour or event is especially true to what I believe is the character of the person or people involved. In other words, if I consider an act to be so original, or a statement to be so much more true or aptly just than any principle of moral rectitude or science or ethical depth of which I have hitherto been aware, then I will feel a touch at least of awe. If I, as an observer, feel that the presenter of an object or idea or the issuer of a work of writing or of some other art exhibits such an unusual degree of honesty, sincerity, thorough-going insight and/or sheer beauty, then, regardless of what others may think, I feel virtually compelled to acknowledge the presence of genuine authenticity in another. But what about my own authenticity? Need I have concern about that? For a period of my life, I had no doubts about my own authenticity. But, knocked about in the school of hard knocks, I began to notice, in reviews after the event, that I was not expressing myself authentically. Not always aware of this in the moment of expression, I became perplexed as to why people were not trusting me as much as I felt justified in expecting. It was toward the end of that period of perplexity that I began calling my firm by the name Authentix Coaches. By then, the word "authenticity" was signifying for me a quality of energy that either induces me to respect its author extraordinarily or that I myself want to manifest in a narrative of my experience or in a presentation of a proposal to which I feel passionate commitment. But how any particular person assesses what s/he observes as authentic or not is, I believe, very largely a matter of whether what s/he perceives is affirming what s/he already believes or wants to believe. |
How, then, can someone gain appreciation for, or at least recognition of, his or her own genuine authenticity? The answer for me is that a scrupulously and consistently accurate person is very often perceived as authentic, but not always in the degree to which he or she will be satisfied. Indeed, one can rarely be sure of enjoying the satisfaction of being recognized as behaving authentically; but one certainly increases one's chances of such recognition if one gives care to assessing the assumptions one has ascertained are held by one's colleagues or audience concerning one's expected social role and values and also to being accurate in describing one’s own unfolding experience. One appears at one's most authentic when one seeks – consciously (but not so consciously as to be considered freakish) – to give expression to one's own vision, ideation, or narration in terms credible to one's companions or audience. In the case of a true visionary this requires extreme courage. But "screwing one's courage up" will not, however, be successful for long, for such expressions will eventually be sensed as bravado -- either unreal or false or else meaningless, tasteless, impractical, immoral, or even disgraceful -- by even modestly skeptical others. Authenticity may also be conceived as the integrity of one's "I concept". Verbal authenticity starts growing when we first try using the word "I" and continues to grow if we get validation from those around us. In my coaching practice I often sense a need to make distinctions between the meanings of words that refer to concepts out of which the present interest in the idea of authenticity seems to me to have emerged: A valid expression is one whose logic is recognized as consistent with the implicit value system of those who consider it valid. Example: “His application for sick pay is not valid”. Pronouncements of validity or otherwise typically come from someone having an officially sanctioned power to announce the verdict of his or her organizational mandate in regard to another’s request or application. Implicit in use of the words “valid or invalid” is the existence of a value system taken to be unimpeachable by both parties in a relationship in which such words are properly used. The party not having power in a relationship can, however, sometimes feel violated by what s/he believes to be a serious lack of either reasonability or rationality in the value system to which the party having power expects conformity, in which case a serious dispute/conflict is in the offing. A logical expression is a representation of an idea in words that, sounding OK, evoke in another little need to assess their truth with any degree of rigour or profundity. Example: "Time is money". A logical statement is rarely challenged, but when it is, someone has recognized that, if it were taken as entirely reliable truth, it would become misleading. In the example, although time is not exactly money, the two are closely related in circumstances in which the nature of the relationship between time and money is both precisely known and paramount. Although many will agree with a logical statement, its lack of intrinsic coherence in some (usually unforeseen) circumstances can seriously mislead people, especially the members of one's immediate affinity group, who habitually accept a logical statement without question. Moreover, many logical statements are clichés, i.e. thunk thoughts unlikely to have much specific relevance to present circumstances (although they do have a superficial connection), and so they will intoduce very little insight to the conversation. Charmingly charismatic politicians (like former British PM Tony Blair or former US President Bush) have frequently used simplistic logic to portray scenarios in which the courses of action they prefer, for whatever reason(s), seem, amongst their fans, to be the "right thing to do". A reasonable expression is a representation of an idea in words that someone else who is in the habit of questioning finds "right enough", i.e. in no way offensive. Example: "A shock and awe invasion of Iraq will cow the Baathists into accepting it". This might have seemed a reasonable assertion to those used to winning by dogged insistence. But actions based more or less on that so-called reasonable assertion triggered, in actuality, severe covert resistance to the point of a majority of observers commenting that the US had got itself into a "Vietnamesque quagmire". Reasonable statements articulated to groups a little larger than one's natural affinity group add educational value; but, to be accepted as reasonable, care is required to eliminate from them assumptions likely to offend or evoke contempt. A rational expression is one representing an idea whose truth someone has tested profoundly. Example: "A rational statement is likely to meet with 'flak' both from ideologically rigid and from thoughtless people, to both of whom a rational statement is unlikely to appear either logical nor reasonable". Rational statements, while having value precious to humanity at large, are best kept limited in exposure to audiences to whom raw truth is considered to be more vital than "psychologically smoothed sooth". Rational statements require the investigative diligence of expert and scrupulously honest researchers and detectives. Their successful communication will typically require heroic commitment unless addressed to people who believe they are on what change-leadership author Daryl Conner refers to as "a burning platform", i.e. in must-grow/change-to-survive circumstances! Following is a table summarizing these definitions: |
You won't find much of this in a dictionary or encyclopedia. Dictionaries and encyclopedias do reflect common usage, but our purposes, if they are both authentic and ethically well-considered, is to convey, and hopefully to gain receipt of, a clear and, hopefully vitalizing, message -- or at least some thoughtful feedback. For this we need to keep to a single meaning for each word within the confines of a particular conversation, and we also need clarity in the distinctions we and our audience make between the meanings of the significant words we use. Moreover, although the range of messages needing to be conveyed is usually much more philosophical outside of an emergency than within one, such clarity is always preferable to mere brevity. Keeping this in mind helps one select, just as revered authors do, precisely the word that conveys exactly the message one intends to convey. This learning approach to working with the idea of authenticity has a consequence for the practice of empathy because the idea of personal change may, paradoxically, be a socially morbid one. In our work to facilitate the growth of individuals and teams, Authentix coaches often observe the release of enormous amounts of energy that have been trapped by authoritative diagnoses or brusquely insensitive, if also earnest, judgments. For example, have you noticed that psychiatrists feel obliged to make diagnoses -- perhaps because that is how they get paid -- and that families not infrequently misuse diagnoses by presuming the member who has had a psychiatric diagnosis must be the one who is "wrong" or "the problem"? So, while a diagnosis may appear to be the authentic truth of an expert, it cannot be a healing factor unless the diagnoser takes the time to summon the empathy to explain, non-judgmentally, its ramifications to all the people significantly in relationship with the diagnosee: Empathy: The discipline/capacity of being actively present to hear the needs, wants and aims of others affected by one's behaviour (action or speech), and of anticipating accurately the sensitivities likely to be excited by one’s inclinations to share (or hide) potentially painful or frightening possibilities with (or from) others. Diagnosees are not machines to be changed. Both diagnoser and diagnosee are human beings who automatically grow because we are all alive and life always grows until it ends -- although perhaps not as fast as some may desire. That seems to me to be the rational conclusion of Erich Fromm's thinking in his classic 1942 book "Escape from Freedom". Authentix Coaches is only advocating a small word difference -- from "change" to "growth", but the effect of doing so is to add empathy to authenticity, and thus a vitalizing balance to any professional approach. At the level of a society, the effect of an individual combining empathy with authenticity may one day be to make social hierarchies much more flexible, displays of fuller authenticity safer for all, and thus vital learning faster for everyone in organizational life. Eye-Zen English is a set of linguistic principles proven by Authentix Coaches to facilitate the development of insight, trust, and cooperation through safe, empathic, and authentic verbal expression. An overview of Eye-Zen English is available at the following link. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 071203-100317 Excerpted from "Non-Presumptive Communications", to be published in 2010 |
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