Authenticity as a Work Skill

An expert moves beyond the authenticity jargon

“Sincerity is the key to success. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” - (allegedly Groucho Marx)

A couple of weeks ago I sat down to interview Shannon Plumb for the Humanity Working podcast.

I’ve been excited to do this for some time, because I have personal experience of the uniqueness and effectiveness of her approach - Shannon is one of my mentors!

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Shannon’s approach to leadership development and mentorship is highly-human centric. She believes (and has strong evidence) that the secret to highly effective leadership is not to follow rigid playbooks from others, but to figure out and accurately present what is authentically you.

Authenticity was one of the main themes of our discussion, in part because it’s such a hugely important part of being relevant in an evolving world of work (something I discussed in this newsletter last week)

As Shannon and I discussed in the podcast, cultivating authenticity is actually rather difficult for many of us. After all, many of us have spent years creating highly polished versions of ourselves and our companies. Letting people see the real thing - well that’s kind of scary, right?

I know it is for me.

So I wanted to discover how to move beyond agreeing that authenticity is important, and discovering how to get comfortable being truly authentic at work.

Here were the main takeaways for me from the chat:

Authenticity is Really Just About Being Human (Flaws and All)

The term authenticity is used so much these days, it’s almost turned into jargon. But really it’s something simple that has been around for ever. Being real, human and showing up without artifice.

Doing all that can get you more TikTok followers, but it’s also incredibly important in the real world, because authenticity is what connects you to others. Shannon has helped me understand that a huge part of this is vulnerability, including being able to share your mistakes and imperfections. After all, what’s more relatable - perfection, or reality?

Empathy Trumps Performative Struggle Every Time

You probably know the storyline. One day I was struggling, just like you. Now I’m rich and famous and you can be just like me!

If I had a dollar every time I’d heard that story I’d be as rich as some of the people telling it. But the problem is that this type of “leadership” storytelling doesn’t meet people where they are.

Whether it is an employee, or an entrepreneur, Shannon highlights that helping others move forward relies on listening to their struggles with empathy, and highlighting what is going well today. This is not “you too can be like me” - this is “you can be successful being you, and here’s how that’s happening already”

Not Everything Has to Be Hard

This is so important, because the idea that work should be hard is deeply embedded in the US work culture. In fact many people (including me) can start to have feelings of guilt when work feels easy. We may feel that we are not working hard enough.

But a lot of the time work just feels easier when it’s more aligned to who we are, something Michele Volpi and I also discussed recently. And when it feels easier, other things can follow, like great decision making, or effective innovation.

So, if work feels like hard work, perhaps it’s time go move beyond just knuckling down and start to think about how you can make it easier.

A good example of this is slowing down to speed up, something that Shannon and I discussed in the podcast, and also something I wrote about in some depth here.

I hope you enjoy the discussion with Shannon.