The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity

APS Member/Author: Adam Grant

Waiting backstage for my name to be called, I started feeling the familiar flutter of butterflies. It caught me off guard, because I thought I’d conquered my public speaking nerves. In the span of a decade, I’d gone from shaking in front of a classroom to calmly delivering keynote speeches for audiences of 20,000. It was supposed to be anxiety then, serenity now.

But something was different today: I was addressing the TED staff at their annual retreat. It was a whole room full of people who judge the world’s most electrifying speakers for a living. I had a dilemma: Should I acknowledge my jitters out loud?

Being vulnerable with emotions is a form of authenticity. Authenticity is about being true to yourself — expressing your inner thoughts and feelings on the outside. Instead of wearing a mask, you let people see what’s really going on inside your head. When we can’t do that, studies show it’s stifling. The pressure to conform to other people’s expectations puts us in an emotional straitjacket, leading to stress and exhaustion. It can also undermine our performance: When entrepreneurs pitch their start-ups and job candidates pitch themselves, pretending to be someone they’re not makes them nervous, interfering with the quality of their presentations.

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In a recent study, researchers examined how striving to be authentic in job interviews influenced lawyers’ and teachers’ odds of being hired. They measured authenticity by asking lawyers and teachers how strongly they agreed or disagreed with statements like, “When interviewing for a job, I try to be honest about my personality and work style,” and, “It’s important for an employer to see me as I see myself, even if it means bringing people to recognize my limitations.” The candidates who agreed with those statements were more likely to get job offers — but only if their résumés had been rated in the 90th percentile or higher. For the vast majority of lawyers and teachers, striving to be authentic didn’t help their chances. And it actually hurt their chances if they were teachers in the 25th percentile or below or lawyers in the 50th percentile or below.

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Read the whole story (subscription may be required): The New York Times