Is authenticity a 'trap'?

TL;DR: probably not

At the weekend I picked up a copy of Seth Godin’s 2020 book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work which was staring out at me from the window of our local Oxfam bookshop. It’s written in the familiar Godin style: short, declarative sentences at the beginning — almost like a non-fiction Jack Reacher book — until you get a couple of chapters in. That’s where the good stuff tends to be.

Each section of the book is numbered. In this blog post I want to focus on extracts from numbers 125 (‘Authenticity Is a Trap’) and 126 (‘Consistency Is the Way Forward’), respectively.

If you’re using any sort of self control… then you’re not being authentic. Only a tantrum is authentic. Everything else we do with intention.

If we’re going to act with intention and empathy, our path is clear. The work is to make change happen. If we don’t ship the work, no change will happen. If we ship the wrong work to the wrong people, no change will happen.

Your audience doesn’t want your authentic voice. They want your consistent voice.

Consistency is an interesting word to use here, especially if I zoom out and think about work in the wider context of my life. One of the reasons I’ve chosen not to have a ‘job’ but rather be a consultant and part of an awesome co-op is because I am inconsistent. But then, we all are; we’re human.

I think it’s telling that in the next section, despite Godin talking about ‘shipping creative work’ he’s talking about people who are employed. Of course you have to be consistent when someone else is paying you wages to do a thing. It goes along with having a set number of days of holiday, having to show up to particular places at certain times, and not having to worry about your pension.

You don’t want an authentic heart surgeon (“I don’t care if you’re having a fight with your landlord — do the surgery as if today’s your very best day”) or even an authentic chef (“I don’t care that you don’t feel like cooking Mexican tonight. It’s on the menu and that’s what I ordered”).

What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we were hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday.

Godin’s formula, which I’m sure works for some, is similar in this book and in his book Linchpin. Choose your audience, find out what they need and what positive change looks like for them, and serve that need. Show up time and time again. Be generous.

For me, that’s a dualist approach to life, where your authentic self is separate to the self that you bring to work. While I’m not saying anything goes in the workplace, I do think it’s important to bring a diversity and plurality of experience. This includes our up and down days, our diverse interests and rabbitholes. Anything else, I’d suggest, is simply a factory mindset.

Image: CC BY-ND Visual Thinkery for WAO