When We Express Ourselves, Let's Not Forget to Think About Others.....
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.
The case against being fake is clear. But when it comes to being real, we have choices about which parts of ourselves to reveal. And there may be times when we’re better off being cautious about what we disclose.
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.
Why did aiming for authenticity fail for most candidates and backfire for some? One possibility is that when job applicants were focused on being authentic, they freely admitted their shortcomings. This didn’t pose a problem for lawyers and teachers with stellar résumés: Their strengths were already evident, so acknowledging weaknesses signaled self-awareness. But for candidates who hadn’t proven themselves, divulging flaws made them seem incompetent and insecure. In a series of experiments, when people who were expected to be competent confessed a weakness like struggling with attention to detail or a vulnerability like seeing a therapist, they were respected less.
Authenticity without boundaries is careless. When we broadcast our limitations, we need to be careful to avoid casting doubt on our strengths. This appears to be especially important for non-dominant groups. Sadly, experiments show that when leaders make self-deprecating jokes, they’re judged as more capable if they’re men and less capable if they’re women. Men’s competence is typically taken more for granted, while — unfairly — women have to work harder to prove themselves at work.
There’s another factor that might explain why authenticity didn’t serve some candidates well: They came across as self-serving and self-absorbed. They were so focused on expressing themselves that they failed to show enthusiasm for the job and curiosity about the organization.
“One of the problems with the ‘bring your whole self to work’ framing is that it’s narcissistic,” Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, said on my TED podcast, WorkLife. “What about taking an interest in the other person?” Sure enough, some evidence suggests that being authentic hurts people who are low in concern for others: they’re liked less and receive poorer performance reviews.
Authenticity without empathy is selfish. Of course we should be true to our values, but one of those values should probably be caring about others.
As I stood backstage at the TED retreat, I started thinking about these guidelines. It was probably safe to be vulnerable: I’d given two TED talks, so the audience would probably assume I was a decent speaker. If I was going to admit my anxiety, I needed to make it about them — not about me. Right before I walked onstage, instead of launching into a story about the emotional roller coaster of my public speaking odyssey, I decided just to address it with one line. As I walked onstage, I said, “Wow. If there’s one thing more nerve-racking than speaking at TED, it’s speaking to TED.”
The audience laughed, and it broke the ice: I immediately felt relaxed. Afterwards, two audience members walked up to tell me it made them feel appreciated. The fact that I was nervous about speaking to them made it clear that they mattered to me. Authenticity is not just about expressing our own thoughts and feelings — it’s about conveying our respect for others.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, is the author of “Originals.” Posted at:
A version of this article appears in print on April 27, 2020, Section B, Page 6 of the New York Times.