We live long lives
with many new experiences, yet popular culture tells us to be the same. Be true
to yourself, they say. Managers have long careers with many roles, yet
researchers and self-helpers tell them to be the same. Be the authentic you,
they say. It is said so many times that it must be true. Except that things
said too many times by too many people need to be researched, because they
might be wrong and in consequential ways.
A new article in Administrative Science Quarterly by Brianna Barker Caza, Sherry Moss, and Heather Vough looks at the connection between being authentic and being the
same, and it finds that what everyone says is not quite true. They asked
whether consistency (being the same) is the same as authenticity (being one’s
true self) and found that the answer is no. The problem with saying that
authenticity demands consistency is that one’s true self is not a unified
whole. We can think multiple thoughts, have multiple beliefs, and take on
multiple roles, and each of these can be fully ours even though they are not
consistent with each other. People are smart enough that they don’t have to be
only one thing, and they are flexible enough that they don’t force themselves
to be only one.
To do the research,
the authors followed the careers of people who had multiple jobs at once and in
some cases also changed these jobs over time. This is a strict test of
authenticity because we understand and accept that people can be different at
work and privately – like the quiet student who is a very outgoing and
improvisational musician. Not surprisingly, the demands of authenticity were a
burden for these people with plural careers. They knew that they were asked to
be authentic, and that this implied being the same always, but they also felt
these demands to be unnatural. Being authentic according to others was the same
as being inauthentic according to themselves. So who wins this battle?
There can be no
winner, but the subjects of this study usually found a truce that worked well
for them. On the one hand, they had to draw lines between who they were and who
they presented themselves as, but these lines did not involve acting – they
involved presenting the part of themselves that belonged to the specific job
they were doing at the time. Sometimes they could even present the more
complete self, but they were careful about when. On the other hand, they
incorporated the multiple roles and identities that belonged to them as part of
themselves, and they saw this incorporation as authentic and valuable. “There
can be only one” was a demand they did not have to follow because they could
shape their careers and benefit (and let others benefit) from the learning and
flexibility that these multiple identities gave them.
Think about the people
around you. Some may seem unusual because they simply do too many things, or
too different things, and we sometimes suspect that some of it is inauthentic –
they act for some benefit. But you could easily be wrong, and you could
underestimate their commitment to each activity and the value they add to it.
