On a morning run I encountered a heron standing on a log with its wing spread. This behavior is uncommon for a heron, this posture is akin to the behavior of cormorants who spend much time with their wings spread after they have been diving for fish. This heron was impersonating a cormorant instead of showing authentic heron-behavior!
Impersonation means taking on a personality or behavior that is not our own. It is the opposite to being authentic. The Marrion-Webster dictionary describes authenticity as being true to one’s personality, spirit, or character. Authenticity is an important concept, it implies living a life without wearing masks. Living authentically is having mindset of what you see it what you get, not in the sense of sharing everything with anybody else—we don’t need to disclose everything while being authentic— but in the sense of not putting up a façade for others.
What keeps us from being authentic? Fear that others don’t like who we are or how we behave can be an important driver for impersonation: we tend to comply with the mores of the tribe. We noticed this in our Teaching with Heart Project where we worked with teachers in higher education to help them infuse their classroom with care, to teach with heart. Some teachers in the program expressed a concern that if they were too caring for students, their colleagues would disapprove. They felt they were supposed to be tough. In many situations people feel a pressure to conform to perceived behavioral norms. At scientific conferences some attendees are keen to show how clever or accomplished they are. This can be driven by a fear of being an outlier, of not fitting in. That fear may or may not be justified. Teachers who care for their students may actually be appreciated by their colleagues for their care, but those colleagues may just not express that appreciation. (Professors may not be the best interpersonal communicators.) Attendees at scientific conferences can touch others positively by showing an interest in others rather than displaying how clever they are. Note that our fear of not fitting in may be biased by inaccurate perceptions of the behavior that others expect. This means that the problem is not only that we may be driven by fear, but also that this fear may also be unjustified.
Another driver for impersonation is “strategic behavior” where the desire to reach a goal is so strong that it makes us behave out of character. I must confess I have done this when playing monopoly. In this game my drive to win has been so strong that I turn into an extremely tough negotiator to a degree that some people find it disturbing. I like to think that this is not my normal behavior, although that may be delusional. I rationalize my tough stance by reminding myself that it is “only a game.” But what if we bring such an attitude to our work? The desire for promotion or profit can easily tempt us to behave in inauthentic ways.
Being inauthentic comes at a price. First of all, when we are not authentic we don’t express who we are and as a result we may fail to bring our passion and talents to the world. What a loss this is! A second reason why impersonation comes at a price is that it can require much energy to take on behavior that is not natural to us, we are forcing ourselves into behavior that is incongruent with our character. This is even more so if we behave in different ways in different groups. Now we must keep track of who we pretend to be, depending on the group we are in. A third reason why impersonation can be costly is that behavior repeated over an extended time tends to creep into our character, we may change by consistently adopting behavior that is not authentic and drift away from our-selves
Here are a few steps you can take to foster authenticity. First, reflect on who you want to be and how you want to show up. This is best done in a meditative fashion where we lean into our intuition rather than in our analytical mind. Second, write it down. You might feel a resistance to put the words on paper. Writing down aspirations brings commitment. This is why the act of writing is an important step, but this feeling of commitment may also hold us back. Third, analyze to what extent your behavior is aligned with how you want to show up. In what situations do you impersonate? The fourth step is the hard one: decide what you want to change. Doing this periodically can be useful for growing authenticity. And if you want help, you can call on me to coach you in this process. You don’t want to pretend you are a cormorant when in reality you are a heron!