The first step to being authentic - realizing when you're mimicking

-
A couple of weeks ago when I was getting advice from someone about negotiating, he said "remember to be authentic".

The phrase stuck with me, but I didn't think about it in much depth.

It came back to me today in another context. It helped that I was vacation for a week, so I was looking at work (and how I work) with fresh-ish eyes.





  • In a meeting today, I found myself suddenly stepping back and looking at my behavior.  I wasn't acting like I was when I ran meetings a couple of years ago, but it was suspiciously like someone I used to work with a year ago.
  • Earlier in the day, I was having a slightly tense discussion with someone and I found my tone suddenly sharp, hesitating on my words to use and being suddenly passive aggressive - something uncharacteristic to me - and so immediately also unpleasant for me. I realized I was simply matching the tone of the person I was having a discussion with. 

In both cases I was mimicking - copying behaviors I'd seen before in similar context.
  • In the first case, I was copying someone I thought was extremely effective in that context 
  • In the second case, I simply mirroring the behavior of the person that had initiated the context
These aren't necessarily bad things. In fact, it's how most people act. It just isn't necessarily the most effective or the most pleasant thing long term.


Why isn't it the most pleasant?
Let's go to Gandhi for this one:
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

If you're mimicking style or substance, it's likely you're departing from what you'd usually say or think.

Why isn't it the most effective?
  1. In the second case, its pretty obvious - mimicking sub-optimal behavior is, well... sub-optimal
  2. In the first case, this might even be good. If you're emulating a pattern you know worked, it could be very effective. However, ultimately if the pattern doesn't feel like yours (or you don't work on it till it does) it may not be as effective. 
So what do you do about it?
  1. Recognize the mimicking - knowing is half the battle
  2. Think hard (ideally before you're in those situations) about how you'd ideally act
  3. Watch yourself during these situations - being aware and present allows you the chance to change what you don't like
I'm mid-way through (2) right now on a couple of these situations. :-)

  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Rescue Me" minisodes

-
I'm a fan of the FX show " Rescue Me " I was lukewarm when Dennis Leary mentioned the mini-sodes on his Daily Show visit. But, for the Rescue Me's particular situation it works really well. First the mini-sodes are actually good! they use characters from the story and tell a little anecdote they were clearly pretty cheap to produce through what seems like a little bit of complicated mess, they're distributing like crazy: YouTube , Crackle (Sony's site), the FX site (powered by Brightcove), Hulu These do exactly what they're supposed to do new episodes aren't coming till Spring 2009 , the fans need something to tide them over and keep the show in their memory: done potentially rope in new fans (short episodes, lower commitment to start watching the show) without freaking out old school media which is loathe to risk potential DVD sales by putting older episodes/clips online: done Its not completely clear to me how much this is by their own design, and
Read more

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Avengers Endgame: how trivial passions can nudge a career

-
Image
The Internets reminded me that today was exactly 2 years since Avenger's Endgame was released. I remember that day vividly for a few reasons I woke up before sunrise (way before the alarm went off).   I wore this (now that I think about it) borderline appropriate T-shir t and then..  .. showed up before 7:00am to watch that movie at Century Shoreline before going to work.  This is still the only movie that has a scene that can make me tear up consistently every single time (I know, I know - it's ridiculous).  That day was interesting from a work perspective for another reason. Along with a few other people at work (and with some crazy last-minute negotiating), we'd pulled together the Thanos Easter Egg on Search. It was typical of a lot of Easter Eggs on Search at the time, in that it wasn't really anybody's job, but we pushed it through because we loved the idea enough to do it. My day job on Media experience on Search helped me justify it a little bit I guess.
Read more