Recently, I sat through a national Sales Meeting and watched as a sales leader claimed to be authentic on more than 4 occasions during the opening remarks of the meeting. I received a text from someone else who was auditing the call, and she shared this thought, "If you say your authentic 4 times during your portion of the opening remarks, you sound like you're trying to convince YOURSELF that you're authentic. And by the way, you're probably not authentic."
As the meeting continued virtually, I monitored the chat because this is really where you get feedback on the true nature of how people are feeling about the experience. I saw the word "authentic" appear through the feed 25 times. 25 times! And I'm sure the leader thought that their message got through to the team, but in reality, I think that most of those posts to the chat were meant to be sarcastic or funny. How did I know?
"Hey I'm authentic?"
"I'm authentic too?"
"Authentic...that's new?"
"We're all authentic."
"Authentic. Hey that's great..."
If you're a leader than lead by example, don't characterize yourself, just be authentic. Whenever I have led a team, I believed it was more important to be there to support my employees, rather than tell my employees how I will support them. Don't say you're authentic, just be authentic. Otherwise, you're just full of shit.
