Authenticity and Process Communication
“It’s not me. I’m doing my part.”
We often hear this phrase from people who come through our communications training seminars. People say that it feels inauthentic to adjust their communication and leadership style in order to connect with and motivate others. They say that it’s more important to stay true to oneself than to be shifty and fickle.
What is it that causes people to have this innate resistance to adjusting their style of communication?
In her December 13 New York Times article, “The Counterfeit Self,” Marina Krakovsky reviewed a fascinating study by psychologists Francesca Gino, Michael Norton and Dan Ariely. These three researchers attempted to study the psychological toll of fooling others, even of we don’t fool ourselves. To do that, they administered a self-graded math test to experimental subjects—half of which thought they were wearing genuine designer eye wear and half of which thought they were wearing cheap knockoffs.
The result? Participants who thought they were wearing counterfeit eye wear were much more likely to cheat. Thirty percent of the women who wore the name-brand sunglasses inflated their true performance; while a whopping 71% of the women who chose counterfeit sunglasses inflated their performance. Says Gino, “When one feels like a fake, he or she is likely to behave like a fake.” Krakovsky hypothesized that other types of fakery could also lead to ethical lapses and quotes Gino as saying, “There are lots of situations on the job where we’re not true to ourselves, and we might not realize there might be unintended consequences.”
How does this relate to effective communication? According to the Process Communication Model, distress is like wearing counterfeit sunglasses. When we are in distress, we are moving away from our authentic self, away from authentic relationships, away from an honest appraisal of ourselves and others.
First degree, or mild distress, sets the stage for a counterfeit self by putting our own, or others’ worth on condition, and believing the myths that “You can make me feel good emotionally,” or “I can make you feel good emotionally.” Whether with people or objects of our desire, if our relationship with them is based on these myths, we are moving away from our authentic self.
In second degree distress, we Mask our authentic feelings and needs, instead attempting to get our psychological needs met with negative attention. When we have our counterfeit sunglasses on, the assumptions we draw about ourselves and others are inaccurate and inauthentic. This leads to poor decision-making, and negative consequences.
The solution is to focus on getting our personal psychological needs met in healthy ways on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Doing so allows us to be self-ful, take off our Masks, experience our natural gifts and abilities, and explore other parts of our personalities that allow us to connect more authentically with others.
Let’s not confuse authentic with comfortable or automatic. Doing what comes naturally means doing what’s always been done, what has been practiced and become habit over time. Although these behavior patterns may have been developed intentionally over time and provide a sense of grounding, habits require very little energy to continue.
Because each person has all six personality types within them, we can be “true to ourselves” and access any part of our personality, even though this may require energy and feel inauthentic at times. While we may have less energy in the less-visited floors of our personality condominium, they are no less a part of who we are.
We’d like to clarify our understanding of authenticity – which means to be all of who you are, to mobilize all of your potential in order to connect in meaningful and respectful ways with others, even if others don’t share the same natural tendencies. Sticking to what’s comfortable and expecting others to change in order to connect with you is not authentic, it’s self-centered.
Our message is simple. Take off your counterfeit sunglasses and be the authentic you! Tend positively to your psychological needs and motivators. And, stretch into less visited parts of your personality to authentically connect with others.
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Great white paper, Jeff. Adds clarity. As a persister, I can really empathize as I struggle with the “Be sincere and true to who you are” mindset. What’s helped me deal with this internal conflict is to think about the values of 1)honoring others for who they are 2)dedicating myself to effective communication and 3)remembering it’s not about me.
Jeff, I really like what you say what you say about habits (they take very little energy and cause virtually no discomfort). I love my habits and I think it would be great if I could effectively meet every situation with them. But, huh, I’ve noticed they don’t always produce the desired outcome. So I like PCM because it gives me a tool to work in the uncomfortable zone outside of habit. Since both PCM and my habits are just “tools,” the choice of tool doesn’t affect my personal feeling of authenticity.
Leadership skills are learned. Management skills are learned. These separate sets of skills are needed to reach different desired outcomes: managing processess to run smoothly vs. leading change to improve the process. Acquiring any skill requires a period of uncomfortableness. Acquiring leaderhsip communication skills is no different.
The real “communications modification challenge” comes with caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s Disease. Eliminating comments about shared memories has been the hardest to master.
I suppose it’s workaholic/logic talk to say that the various channels have always just seemed to be (like) speaking different languages. English is my mother tongue, and I can’t express myself as well in other languages, but that is just a learning issue, not a comment on the validity of what I am hearing or trying to communicate (to stretch the metaphor – there could be invalidity if my lack of facility in the 2nd language leads to those wonderful errors of language/cultural novices). Communication is communication, dunh. If I’m not speaking the language my listener will understand, well…. certain sterotypes of Americans speaking English loudly and slowly in other countries come to mind.
Fascinating, as always, to see how the different channels experience this issue and describe it. I can see how my Reactor phase builds on the logical assessment to stress the importance of relating.
My new favorite quote from Virginia Satir is “The meaning of your communication is the response you get. If you get the wrong response, change the way you communicate”.
Hi Nate!
An interesting and inspiring article. I/we at 5C have been pondering about this a lot lately as Rainer and me will give a presentation on authenticity next week at a conference. We view things as you describe them brilliantly in your white paper. Can we use the example of the counterfeit glasses? I like it.
Being authentic is to be all of who you are.
We know that people tend to only use the first 2 or 3 floors of their condominium.
Often, the last ones, which are not so easily are accessible are the ones we recognize in others as “difficult persons”. As we don’t want to be like “a difficult person”, we unconsiously “devalue” this personality type into ourselves and do not live it or avoid going there.
In our experience, people who have been on a PCM seminar, accept these parts into themselves again (and others).
By accepting and starting to live these parts again, they experience their being as more authentic.
And it doesn’t even have to be in the upper part of the personality.
I remember feedback from a base rebel person… who said: “since the PCM seminar, I accept myself again and I stand to it. My team members now know that I’m a rebel and I live my being. I feel much happier, I am more cheerful, enjoy my work much more and am more productive.”
Distress definitely masks our true authentic being.
acceptance and permission can be another important door opener to more authenticity.
I believe
Spring greetings from Switzerland!
Nicole