Authenticity

In coaching circles much is spoken of ‘authenticity’ but what does it mean and what is its relationship with our work as coaches?

Most frequently authenticity is described as the degree to which we are true to some form of integrity, spirit, or character, in the face of the pressures of living in a material world with its external forces, pressures and influences.

Speaking from the premise of an NLP model, I have experienced authenticity as an alignment of my behaviours with my capabilities, beliefs, values, sense of identity and sense of something beyond identity.

So often we, as coaches, are expected to ‘be authentic’ at all times.  This carries with it an unspoken judgement that we should never be caught being ‘inauthentic’ as this would imply that we were failing in some way.

During my recent reading around the Narrative Approach to coaching I have encountered a more flexible, more realistic definition; a definition which seems to me to open up more possibilities:

Narrative Enquiry suggests that ‘inauthentic’ might mean ‘naturally occurring’: with our ‘authentic selves’ being easily ‘lost’ in the everyday routines of our customary responses.  These responses can be viewed as the result of the narrative of our personal history, sometimes referred to as ‘the past that lies before us’.

Inauthentic in this sense is not a value laden judgement, rather an observation.  As we begin to understand ourselves in this way we give ourselves more choice. We can choose knowingly from possibilities.

What makes a response authentic, according to this description, is that a decision has been made true to something akin to personal beliefs and values as constructed by self in the moment.

This feels to me like freedom.

2 Comments

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  By Emma Ranson Bellamy, October 22, 2010 @ 7:06 pm

  Hi Sali,
  Good post. I often struggle with the expectation of the coach. The premise that the coach is in some way a perfect being that never gets cross or has an ‘off day’ I was once in a park picking up after my dog when i bumped into client, it was as if in that moment the ‘magic’ for them went from who i was. A ‘normal’ person who picks up poo. I’m all for the mysticism of the coach leaving the practice room and the respect of the process and the skill of the coach executing that process being let in. As a very good friend of mine says “To err is to be human to Ahh is to be a pirate.”

• 

  By Sali, October 22, 2010 @ 7:47 pm

  Thanks Emma
  I agree. I aim to create a relationship based on shared enquiry.

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