Authenticity is how you win long term, I think...

How authentic are you? I think the answer to that question is greatly influenced by our interpretation of authenticity, and our ability to self analyse and self critique.

Being authentic isn't about being a good person, being nice or being well liked, being authentic is about being yourself, even if you are an arse hole. Better to be an authentic arse hole than an unauthentic 'good guy', in my opinion. I would rather be authentic and genuinely liked by 100 people than not be a true representation of myself to get a million people to say they like me, but that's something that's taken me a lot of my 30 years to learn, I haven't always thought that.

So why do I think authenticity in business is important? Well, firstly lets talk about the game of business; It's pretty complicated, there are lots of teams & players involved, lots of rules, some written, some unwritten and, like with most games, the more you play, the better you get.

You can feel like you're winning at business by being unauthentic, and lots of people do, but only short term. If you aren't offering people a genuine product or service, if you are selling unrealistic ideas or expectations, people will find out eventually and they'll stop working with you. You also have to believe in whatever you're selling yourself as well, if you don't believe in it or your ability to deliver it, people will eventually pick up on that.

Unfortunately a lot of people operating in the world of business fall in to this category, striving for short term success by investing part of themselves in something they don't truly believe in or know is complete shite. It can be demoralising, but we convince ourselves it will be worth it in the end, when we get that promotion, or pay rise, or whatever short term goal we've set. We ultimately get trapped in a cycle of not not being authentic, but we think that's part and parcel of playing the game.

As I already mentioned, the more you play the game of business, the better you get. Over time we learn more about how things work, how other people work, but most importantly how we work. What our strengths are, what we struggle with, people we work well with and those we don't work so well with, the crap we are prepared to put up with and not prepared to put up with. It's all part of the learning process and figuring out how to be authentic.

Once you've figured that out you have a much better appreciation of who you are, what you want to achieve and why. You are better at saying yes to the right things and no to the wrong things. You feel fully committed to most of, if not all of the tasks you take on, you like waking up in the morning and going to work and you feel more motivated.

If this is how you feel about your work, you've already won, but I would hazard a guess that it took those people a long time to get there, lots of trial and error, many moments of doubt, false starts and back to the drawing board moments. What the majority of people that have arrived at the point of feeling truly authentic at work will have in common though is, patience.

So anyone out there that questions what they are doing, why they're doing it and who they're doing it for, my advice would always be, keep learning, keeping trying new things when those opportunities present themselves and be patient. I'm trying to practice that, it's a process and not an easy one, but I personally believe it's the right thing for me and my business.

I've only very recently got to a point where I think like this, but that doesn't mean I'm there yet, I just feel like I understand it better. Being authentic might get you in trouble every now and again, it will certainly cause the odd disagreement, but it's much easier to look at yourself in the mirror when you put long term authenticity above short term wins.

Stay Lucky and Stay Authentic!