Authenticity is one of the highest-rated leadership skills, along with integrity, responsibility and commitment. Today we know that to be authentic is to be genuine, but the origin of the word ‘authentic’ dates back to the Greek word authtentes, which means “acting on one’s own authority”.
To be acting on one’s own authority, we need to know our genuine selves, including our values, morals and principles; what excites us; the boundaries we set around our behavior; and how we allow the behavior of others to affect us. Discovering the answers to these essential questions allows us to further discover our authentic selves.
I’ve often pondered the difference between authenticity and integrity. They both seem to go hand-in-hand, so my mind confuses the two. Integrity can be defined as an honesty and soundness of morals and character. We describe a weak building as having its structural integrity compromised; likewise, when we have integrity, we are strong and sound in what we say, feel and know we are. Integrity requires honesty, yet to be honest we need to know our authentic, genuine selves first.
To be genuine, honest and expressive can create tumultuous times. This is the cost that we sometimes must pay for speaking and living our own truths, and compared to the alternative—withholding or avoiding the truth, living a false identity and creating self-resentment—this cost is more than worth paying.
The cost of authenticity can be unknown when we make authentic decisions and hold authentic conversations, and it can be very substantial. Take, for example, a woman I know who chose to leave a disconnected marriage. Of her three children whom her decision affected, two chose to side with the woman’s ex-husband and break off their relationships with her. Was the huge cost of her decision worth it? Ultimately, that’s up to the woman to decide and weigh against the other outcome of a life lived dishonestly—the feigning of happiness, disconnection, and misalignment of her married life and the life that her soul knows, needs and wants.
In the relationship training, mediation and workplace restoration business, my partner and I have seen that a lack of authenticity create so much conflict. People are unaware of their own falseness. They lack authenticity and often are not even aware of it. It’s unconscious and often unintentional. People don’t know what they don’t know, so it takes some unraveling of the issue from a third party to help them see how their own truth has been clouded.
Bob, for example, is unhappy with his manager. Bob assumes that his concern or complaint is directly related to his manager because the cost of taking responsibility for himself is higher than passing the buck to someone else. Rather than paying the price of discomfort to have an authentic conversation with his manager, Bob instead shares his unhappiness with his other colleagues. Once he has enlisted a few like-minded people, Bob takes his complaints above his manager and requests that something be done on his behalf. This is a common scenario, and one that I’m sure every workplace, family and circle of friends can relate to.
We avoid the cost of authentic and real conversations because we don’t want to pay the price of discomfort, fear, vulnerability and self-awareness. To make things worse, there are many systems in place which support and enable this type of behavior in the workplace. To use systems like grievances, incident reports and formal complaints to protect us from our own dishonesty and unresolved internal conflicts is like spending excessively when we’re already in debt.
Is it less costly to hide? To pass the buck? Not in the long run. Hiding our own falseness or lack of authenticity is a short road that rears its ugly head over and over again until we are ready to face the truth and pay the price of being who we really are. Living an authentic life won’t always be easy for you and those that really matter to you, but as you create conversations about your authenticity and decide to stay true to who you really are, the freedom you’ll feel from your soul is priceless.
