There has been a flurry of discussions and comments lately about the importance of being authentic. I hear it from my clients, I read about it in articles, I see people talking about it on TV, and I receive e-mails about how someone is or is not authentic. Somehow, ‘authenticity’ has become a critically important element of business leadership. When a word gets elevated to common usage, there usually is a variety of reasons lurking underneath.
People Used to Just Be Themselves and Not Talk About Being Themselves
I grew up in Jennings, Missouri. It would be hard to imagine a less pretentious place than Jennings in the 1960s and 1970s. No one ever talked about being themselves. They just were themselves. There was Mr. Nolan, the athletic kind man who coached our teams, Ed Mensio, the chain-smoker who coached my soccer team in 7th grade and never said a mean word to anyone, and Gene Coughlin, my dad who coached our baseball and basketball teams even though he had six kids to worry about. There was Mrs. Schulte and the Maixners who worked so hard in the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. There was Miss Kostecki and Miss Hake, my fifth grade and third grade teachers, who were just totally themselves. I never heard anybody talking about someone being genuine or authentic. We all just were who we were.
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