Authenticity is Your Most Powerful Tool

I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity lately, and how much it means in the personal branding space. Authenticity is more than just being YOU, it’s being genuinely invested in projecting your real self to the rest of the world. That’s a tough mountain to climb in the insurance industry, because we often live in worlds where authenticity isn’t one of those traits people admire, but wish at times you’d just “keep it to yourself.” But within the world of people showing up authentically in insurance, is an amazing growth opportunity for us. I believe our industry is beginning to realize the power of individuality and the importance of sincerity. Being unpretentious about WHO we are in our work in insurance gets us much further down the road to including others in every conversation.?

Stick with me here. It’s tough to be authentic in an industry that is risk-averse. You often find yourself stranded in the harsh light of criticism and conflict because you are willing to speak truth, openly and honestly. This article isn’t designed as a critique of our industry’s ability to accept others as who they are; it is designed to provoke thought and understanding around a concept that I have found very meaningful to me both personally and professionally of late.

Authenticity sheds new light on conversations. It helps people to understand the power of human connection and helps to bring about robust conversations that spurn others to action. I have learned that just being myself, and not holding back from that because of the fear of “what others will think,” can lead to major breakthroughs in dialogue with others. It’s quite the powerful tool in your tool belt of figuring out who you are, and where you want to go with your career, and relationships with others.

I don’t say all of this without experiencing some difficult roadblocks in my path to being authentic with others. Anyone who knows me understands that I am a bit of rebel both professionally and personally. I tackle the good, the bad and the sometimes ugly about our industry out of the pure motivation to make our industry better. And there’s always roads we can plow in that direction. The question is, how do we accomplish paving those roads with being our authentic selves?

The answer is: People want to see the “real” us. Not the fake, plastic imposters we present of ourselves to the professional world. That means letting our guard down, it means challenging the imposters of ourselves which tell us we cannot do this. And the biggest trial by fire in this journey? Getting over the fact that we don’t have to have other people “like” everything we do to make headway and gain respect and trust of an audience. Personal branding is a journey that never really ends, and is the roadmap by which our authentic selves are revealed as we step into the light of self-realism. But to do that, we must GET over the fraud inside of us who tells us we can’t, we shouldn’t, and we won’t be successful in this journey.

So I ask you to challenge yourself with things you NEVER thought you would do in development of your message to the world. What this also means is that you must confront the parts of you that aren’t that easy to confront. Your limitations, and the infamous imposter syndrome. “Imposter syndrome, also called perceived fraudulence, involves?feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence that persist despite your education, experience, and accomplishments. To counter these feelings, you might end up working harder and holding yourself to ever higher standards”(Healthline.com, 2021). Release that imposter, and send them on their way. They will only feed negativity to your authenticity journey.

I’ll be the first to admit, my life experiences, have led me to feelings of imposter syndrome. And I will preface every story that I tell here today with my disclaimer. My experiences are NOT your experiences, and nor would I expect that anyone build their personal brand in exactly the same way that I have, because what works for me, may not work for you. There is no one single path to personal branding.

So here’s some of my story.

I had a job I loved. I was actually really good at that job. I was a claims trainer. I absolutely thrived in that role and took off as a leader pretty quickly. ?

Then disaster struck. The dreaded company transition and job reassignment.

Suddenly, I was in a world I didn’t know, didn’t understand at all in auto injury claims, and feeling like I had been demoted. And I felt completely lost. LOTS of self-doubt persisted at me. What did I do to lose my trainer role? Why was I the one who was picked? I was frustrated and angry and feeling awfully rebellious. And not the good kind of rebellious either.

I credit the leader I was blessed to work for as he helped me to conquer these feelings of self-doubt. The first words he said to me, is don’t worry about this job, you can do this, you’ve got the skills, and I’ll help you to figure out how to be successful here. He said, just knuckle in, I’ll teach you what you need to know, and we will figure out this journey together. I cannot stress the importance of good leaders in shepherding individuals through times of chaos and uncertainty. Leaders must take on the role of being the light in dark tunnels, and guiding others when there is no clear path. It’s a tough role, but those who do it well are the beacons in corporation just like the leader I had within my time in auto injury.

He was the leader I needed because he willing to encourage me to be a rebel and saw that as a sign of positive behavior. This individual helped me to figure out my path, and I found a way to challenge that imposter who told me I couldn’t do the job, or that I wasn’t cut out to work in that world. He also helped me to see that while my situation wasn’t ideal, I could find success by pushing myself, and learning and growing.

I figured out how to take my setback as an opportunity; THAT refocus, and re-shift taught me so many lessons. I even finished up my CPCU designation during that time because I was given a road on which I could run with autonomy and freedom. I got AMAZING reviews in that job. High performance marks, bonuses, management preparedness, and while I did learn that auto injury was not the place for me, I now know auto claims, and I have valuable experience. PLUS, I began to build my brand as someone who can fight through something that is less than ideal, less than perfect, and lead through adversity.

And it’s those experiences that have allowed me to soar into new heights as I challenged my perceptions about what I can and cannot do. I also learned that resilience isn't built in a vacuum. And that sometimes you are in the wrong place for all the right reasons. And WHAT you must do, is REALIZE what that refining fire moment is doing for you and capitalize on it.

And for me, it built me into a writer, a thought leader, and it allowed me to grow out of my cocoon.

Writing and sharing my thoughts with the world, despite how confrontational and rebellious they are at times, has led to major success for me. I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid of challenging the status quo within our industry. I wrote and poured my soul into words, and it was incredibly therapeutic for me. And I never lost sight of that. I KNEW who I was at this moment. Or at least I thought I did.

And here’s where the story takes another wild twist.

Remember that auto injury job that taught me so much? Well, life happenings struck again, and I was told the office location I was working in was going to close. I had choices to make.

• Stay with the company- move with the job, find new places to be successful in auto injury claims, probably soar from there.
• Find another job with the company.
• Or leave the company.

So I weighed my options. I knew I wasn’t cut out for leading within auto injury claims, and I made a crazy decision. A rebel’s decision. I WENT BACK to the place in the company that I had just left, moved myself to Dallas TX, and became a trainer again. After all, I was following my heart and soul right? But this choice came with a caveat, I had to move away from my family.

And THAT was tough. But I figured, I’m resilient. I’m a rebel. I can do this right?

I started out running in that job right after Hurricane Harvey. I spent 8 weeks traversing back and forth across Southern TX, blowing and going. Again, wild success. Built relationships, started climbing again. And 8 months after I took that job, I was standing a week away from taking on a leadership development role in the company. And the bomb dropped. I was being reassigned again.

AGAIN. Back to being a claim representative, this time on the fire/property side of the company, so at least I felt more sure of what I would be doing. But this reassignment came with some things that weren’t so easy to digest. I couldn’t apply out of the job right away to other places in the company. So how was I going to write myself out of that one?

And I had another tough decision to make. What now? So I grabbed ahold of myself, and took a step out to confront some hard truths, including confronting that imposter of myself once again. I pulled out that rebel and challenged the constraints that were put into my path. But then I had just one choice to make.

Find another job in the company.

I then decided it was time for me to jump out of the proverbial airplane. So I did, into a wildly different role in actuarial, and I landed a job as an analyst within this area. Now, in taking this leap, I knew I wasn’t really someone who would fit in with actuaries. But, because of the role I took, I was able to take on the challenge of helping to develop insurance policy language. And I’ve always been a coverage geek; I love the insurance policy language and the opportunity of being a part of WRITING it, just made me giggle with glee.

That job leap took me to a cornfield. And to places I never, ever thought I would be. But, it also brought me to my next point about personal branding. Sometimes you will be in the wrong place, for all of the right reasons, and it will reveal the most astonishing things to you about your personal brand.

Being authentic, as I have said before, is a TOUGH thing to do. It requires that you are personally vulnerable. It requires that you challenge again, that imposter who is going to tell you that you can’t do this. Being authentic requires that you open yourself up to the world. Your personal brand starts and ends with telling a genuine story about you — your capabilities, your expertise, and your experience. By contrast, people who try to concoct a personal brand that isn’t rooted in reality or who choose to “fake it ‘til they make it” will find that their efforts have negative effects, serving to turn audiences away from them.

And that’s when I decided that I just had to unleash. I started pushing against the walls that surrounded me, really hard. And I broke through the walls of that imposter who kept telling me that I couldn’t accomplish the challenging life circumstances ahead of me.

A great personal brand is one that is authentic and intrinsically connected to who you are as a person. It magnifies your talents and knowledge in a way that makes them appealing to a specific audience — in this case, for me, my co-workers, and my extended network in the insurance. Being authentic though, required that I step back away from my fears that people would know, behind all this craziness that I have been through, I was just completely terrified.?

This is a picture of me soon after I moved to Bloomington. No makeup, raw. I had had a horrible day because, well, I was taking on something that I didn’t know that I could do. I was sitting in my little car, with the top down, hair amess, and had shed a few tears. But there was something about the light, the sun which doesn’t shine a lot in the place where I live, and the place I was that told me on this day, it was ok to be MYSELF wherever I was, and whatever my location happened to be.

Did I mention that this latest job I had taken on was one that is typically the straightest-laced department within any company? I mean it’s actuarial. They are lovingly old-fashioned, wildly controlled, and very QUIET all of the time.

And did I mention that this job had required me to move 555 miles away from my family? I had thrown myself headlong out of the frying pan into the fire. But it was a refining fire for sure. I found my personal brand, in a cornfield, in a little Midwest town, with the right kind of light shining in my life. And I started to be more vulnerable than I ever had before.

I started writing and telling stories that challenged the practices of this THING that had hit me over and over in my career. And I confronted it head on. My personal brand grew a tremendous amount in all the meandering journeys I have had throughout my experiences, and within my writing. Our experiences translate into our stories which become our personal brand.

The rambling path of my personal branding story goes on from there, but one of the main things I have learned is that that authenticity, and a willingness to be vulnerable enough with others to show it, is one of our most powerful branding tools. Authenticity means you are willing to tell your stories to others, and to share them with the world, in whatever format you choose.

And the greatest thing about all of what I have been through in my own personal branding journey is that it really isn’t about me. My personal branding journey yes has been deeply personal, but it’s really more about the stories I wanted to make sure that the world knew. It was about the legacy I want to leave, and the footprints I may cast in the sands of others’ lives I happen to cross.?It’s about how I decided to just let go of the stories within and release them to others so that they could take fire. It really is about HOW I could better serve the rest of the world through the messages shared. How I could connect with other people, and hopefully help them by seeing my life lived vulnerably. And it has ALL BEEN so much fun doing that. People know who I am, that’s not a bad thing, and I can be as wild and free with that as my soul says I need to be.

The power of human connection. Human connection is an energy exchange between people who are paying attention to one another. It has the power to deepen the moment, inspire change and build trust. Talk about your life to others. Tell your stories to others with the words you want to use. Tell them HOW you want to tell them your stories. We live our lives through authentic storytelling. The legacy we will leave in this world is WHO we are. ?Personal branding must be your outlet to create energy with positive influence. Finding that path can be difficult and figuring that out in a large organization can be even more challenging, but you can do this through figuring out how you can serve others with the stories you choose to be vulnerable enough to tell.

And you CAN do that, even in the most risk-averse industry in the world.