I’ve shared about the idea of authenticity on here a few times, both good and bad. Authenticity can be a huge step above automation, but it can also lead to laziness. In a recent episode of his “Remarkable People” podcast, Guy Kawasaki spoke with Seth Godin, and Seth laid out some problems with being too authentic.
He starts by sharing the overall problem:
“I think this pitch that you should be authentic is baloney. No one wants you to be authentic. Just name anything you care about. If you go to a concert or if you get or need surgery, you don’t want the surgeon to be authentic. If they’re having a bad day, you don’t want them to do a bad job. You want them to be consistent.”
That’s not to say you should lie to people, but rather you should focus on the job to be done (with some exceptions). Again from Godin:
“I think that being a hustling fraud is not okay. I think that manipulating people is not okay, but I am defining the opposite of authentic as consistent if you’re a professional. There are a few people, a Kardashian, Miles Davis who we will pay money for authenticity. … But in general, what we want from professionals in our life is consistency. Sign up to be who you want to become and keep doing that.”
For most of us, we can be authentic or we can be consistent, and the people we serve generally would prefer that we’re consistent.
It’s similar to what Gary Vee said about how to view marketing today. There is the side of what we wish it would be (our authentic desires) versus how things actually are (dealing with the realities of today).
We can share our desires and be authentic at times, as that can be a great way to help build relationships, but at the end of the day we need to be able to push most of that aside and be the consistent performer that we’re being paid to be.
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