"Manufacture” Authenticity

A few years ago, we were in the Office of the Governor of Massachusetts. The walls of the waiting room were surrounded by formal photographs of its most recent occupants. Each photograph captured an authentic attribute of its subject, yet all the photographs had been stage-managed.

It seemed a paradox: the photographs were simultaneously authentic and artificial.

Today we discuss the authenticity paradox of leadership.

Why is Authenticity Important?

Harter (2002) describes authenticity as owning one's personal experiences, including one's thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, or beliefs. It is acting in accord with one's true self by expressing what one genuinely thinks and believes.

Using a theory-based measure of authentic leadership from employee samples in China, Kenya, and the United States, there is a significant and positive correlation between employee perception of a supervisor’s authenticity and supervisor-rated performance. There was also a positive correlation between the high level of perceived supervisor authenticity and employee stated levels of job satisfaction. (Walumbwa, 2008)

People like working for people they believe are authentic.

The Authenticity Paradox: Yogurt.

A few years ago, Greek-style yogurt with names like Chobani and Oikos were eroding sales of Yoplait, a traditional yogurt sold by consumer market powerhouse General Mills. Yoplait came out with its own competitive product. It was called Yoplait Greek and it failed miserably. The company decided to “manufacture authenticity.”

How do you manufacture authenticity? Start with your genuine history.

In 1964, 100,000 French farmers merged their individual units to be able to sell products beyond their village base. That is the origin story of Yoplait. In 2011, General Mills purchased a 51 percent controlling interest in the cooperative.

General Mills decided to get rid of its imitation Greek yogurt. In its place, General Mills created “Oui.” It is not Greek Yogurt. It is French Yogurt. And it is sold in small glass pots.

Why glass pots?

• The original French farmers in the Yoplait cooperative aged their milk age in glass pots.
• “Oui” is an authentic homage to Yoplait’s French origins. It also is a manufactured homage.

The lesson: stop imitating your competitors. Look at your history for your future.

The Authenticity Paradox: Leadership.

Suzanne Bates (2016) has done research on 15 qualities of effective leadership. And one of the factors is authenticity.

Bates describes the case of “Nancy,” a leader who could communicate passion about the company mission. In expressing that passion as relentless positive, she came across as an insincere corporate cheerleader. People perceived she was distracting the team from acknowledging the challenging aspects of their work.

Bates points out that real leadership authenticity is about finding ways to encourage authentic dialog. She helped Nancy find a comfortable way to acknowledge her own concerns to her team and to participate in the solutions. She shared her own past experiences, including stories of failure.

In time, Nancy was perceived as a more authentic leader. But the authenticity that inspired her team had been the product of confidential coaching.

The Authenticity Paradox: Institutions

“Grit University” in Los Angeles had become world class and had campuses in Los Angeles, Paris, and Tel-Aviv. Each September there was a ceremony for entering students. The President would tell the same founding story: the university was established by a young man who could not afford to put himself through graduate school. A wealthy stranger happened to share a train compartment with the young student and wrote a check to pay the student’s education. The only stipulation was that the young man uses his education to benefit others.

The young man founded Grit University to help poor, gritty, urban youth move up the socioeconomic ladder. The President stressed that the founding themes of the University were “help gritty urban young adults move up the socioeconomic ladder through education” and “pay it forward when you are successful. You owe your success to others who helped you.”

It was a powerful founding story and one the President repeated to new faculty and students each fall.

That president retired and was replaced by a succession of professional higher education leaders from other institutions. They did not fully appreciate the founding story. Their focus was on the University’s future and the difficult financial realities of the present. That focus dictated that the school should strive to copy the best academic practices of more highly ranked institutions: focus on excellence in academic research.

By focusing on compliance with “best practices,” Grit University moved away from its authentic founding story. This is the higher education equivalent of General Mills coming up with Greek Yogurt to compete against Chobani.

Trying to imitate market leaders is usually a proposition that leads to failure: true market leaders are always going to be changing. Laggards who strive to emulate will never catch up.

With persistent institutional failure to keep up, the institution may turn to competing on the basis of low price. And for an educational institution, that is never a formula for lasting success.

The lesson for higher education is the same lesson yogurt teaches us: stop trying to imitate your competitors. Look to your future by honoring your past.

The Authenticity Paradox: Successful Professional Service Sales.

An insurance brokerage retained us to work with “George,” a salesman who provided risk management products for high net worth individuals. In his world, “best practices” in sales involve reaching high net worth individuals by working through valued advisers to business owners such as attorneys or accountants.

Of course, every insurance sales professional in town was trying to talk to the same valued advisers about similarly priced products.

We administered the Strong Interest Inventory, a well-researched tool to statistically measure interests/values in relation to people in hundreds of occupations. The idea is that the stronger the interest profile between George and people who love doing what they are doing, the more the probability that George will be serving people he loves to be with…and getting paid for it.

In our feedback session, we informed George that his profile fit with automobile mechanics. George responded that his father had been an automobile mechanic, he had grown up around cars, and he loved toying with them. Playing with cars was a hobby. As a general rule, automobile mechanics do not make enough money to be viable customers for George’s insurance products.

George was frustrated and angry at us. We were not offering realistic help for improving his sales performance. We suggested he return to his roots: cars. Use his love of cars to gain business.

Instead of trying to gain the attention of the same attorneys and accountants his competitors were trying to meet, why not join the BMW Car Club of America and be an active participant? He angrily responded that he could not afford a BMW.

Since the BMW Car Club of America was a client of ours, we explained that the Club does not require BMW ownership for membership. It only requires “interest” in BMW cars.

George smiled and relaxed: he easily met that standard of membership.

Each weekend members of the BMW Car Club would rent some ball field in the region, drive their BMWs on the field, pop open their hoods, and discuss BMW issues with each other.

George would discretely park his Toyota Corolla two blocks away and walk to the ball field. He quickly bonded with his fellow BMW Car Club members and impressed them with his understanding of car mechanics.

In short order, he was meeting Club Members for breakfast and lunch. Our intervention allowed him to be his authentic self with a group of like-minded souls. His sales improved. George sent us a photograph of himself standing next to his brand new BMW!

Summary and Conclusions:

The case of George is an example of the authenticity paradox at work. He was not able to be his authentic self by being in law office waiting rooms with his insurance sales competitors. Our value for George was to dig into his history using psychological assessment tools to come up with something truly authentic. And then we used our business skills and networks to “manufacture” success.

The word “authentic” is appealing. We like to avoid people we think of us an “unauthentic.” Research has shown employees to be more productive when they perceive their boss to be “authentic.”

We have provided four examples of the authenticity paradox. The key in all instances is diving into your personal or institutional history to find some authentic gem that can be used to convey something unique and relevant to your world.

This diving process is not spontaneous. It must be managed. And that is why it is called the authenticity paradox. It requires help and structure, like the photographer who took portraits of former Governors of Massachusetts. Authenticity can be manufactured.