The great and noble Dr Phil once wrote "Be Your Authentic Self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and tell you who you're supposed to be." I'm not sure what world he lives in, but being concerned with what others think of us is, to some extent, hard wired into our personality. But, authenticity is in vogue these days and apparently, by Dr Phil's definition, we are living authentically when we don't give a single damn about what anyone else has to say about us, in other words, being as asshole. I've heard Dr. Phil is very authentic.
The "authentic self" standard is now being used liberally in workplace culture circles, in training and development, and human resources training. As if we don't have enough standards to live up to in the workplace, now we have to BE AUTHENTIC on top of everything else. And what does it mean to be authentic? What does inauthentic look like? Can anyone really tell us what that means?
I am one of those people that used to talk about authenticity in the workplace. I liked the word, and thought I understood what I meant. But I've come to recognize what a foggy idea human authenticity is. Who decides what being authentic is? What is the metric for human authenticity? Is there a subjective criteria for evaluating a persons level of authenticity?
I've been in "leadership" meetings where the whole idea of "authenticity" was tossed about to describe people who were in agreement with a leadership dictate or direction. Those people who were seen as complainers, outsiders, or prickly deviants were often labeled as "inauthentic." It was an utterly useless criteria and lead our understanding of one another exactly, nowhere.
Authenticity should have nothing to do with agreement or harmony. It should be relegated as a term in art collecting and applied to authenticating the originality of artifacts and collectibles, and not applied to human beings. Better yet, we can decide for ourselves if we're being authentic or not, and never anyone else mind. It might be more useful to think about our integrity and originality, both of which can be subjectively evaluated by our peers, and both imply actions we could take to have greater integrity or to be original.
So, here's where I am these days, not that it matters to those inauthentic people who may disagree with me, it's enough to just show up and be yourself, whatever that may be for you, and more important to be with your integrity. Authenticity, after all, is something we must decide and apply to ourselves. Why not spend less time gnashing the teeth over our own, or someones level of authenticity, and more time just hanging here and now with whomever you're with. Cut them some slack why don't you? And don't worry about whether you're being authentic, it's a goofy, though fashionable ruse. Frankly, if you think about it, none of us are that important anyway, except, of course, Dr. Phil, he's so authentic.
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