AUTHENTICITY IN COACHING – what is revealed

Authenticity could be seen as the holy grail of 21st century human relating. A state expected and aspired to because being authentic is shorthand for being real, honest, genuine (therefore trustworthy?) Often referred to as being yourself, or even your true self.  It could be taken at face value - after all, everyone knows what is means, right?

In the context of Coaching (and mentoring and facilitating others) whether you are the coach or the person being coached, authenticity is undoubtedly a desirable quality.

But what does authenticity mean?  I am genuinely interested because I’ve spent a good few days this week thinking about it and as I write, I realise the word has become somewhat nullified for me, like so many words I encounter - and employ - perhaps by overuse and a touch of bombast.

I’m reminded that when words become so much a part of our common usage we can stop being acquainted with their value and meaning, and our intent in using them. They become part of the scenery so familiar to us that we forget to really look at them. There they are, hanging like cobwebs in the meeting spaces of our minds, noticed from the corner of our eyes and forgotten about.      

Has ‘authenticity’ become the bland magnolia of my coaching vocabulary I wonder? Perhaps. If so, then it seems timely to reengage with its meaning, why its pursuit is of such importance and maybe in the exploration find a few alternatives that don’t leave me internally eye rolling when I hear myself say it. And, if one of the intentions of coaching is to facilitate another in raising and broadening consciousness (and hence widen options and choices), the need to go a bit deeper is fundamental: to inquire into and make some sense of things, to find or make meaning, to consider impact and consequence, this has to include what is expressed of ourselves through the language we use, and that, most definitely, includes me.   

Language is revealing, and revelation is very much a part of the dynamics of authenticity.  So, what has my dive into the exploration of ‘authenticity’ revealed to me and of me?  

Authenticity is not a static state of being

What makes being oneself, being real or being authentic so wonderfully complex (and thankfully not easily defined) is everything that contributes to our ways of understanding who and what and how we are - our sense of self, and what we perceive to be real and true about ourselves, and in its fullest sense, the ‘world’ we inhabit.  That is very rich territory indeed to explore.   Understanding ourselves is the gateway to relationship, to others and to community and not the needless navel gazing exercise that those who show little interest in their impact on so many and so much would have.

I know that authenticity is not a static state of being.   It is a dynamic, moving relationship between what we have come to believe and what we value, our lived experience and the inherent dissonance that occurs between our best intentions and our actions, our thoughts and our feelings, our desired freedoms and our commitments and responsibilities.  Authenticity is experienced, touched, achieved, or expressed in different ways, and at different times, with different people, in different contexts.   Like confidence, it isn’t always needed, present or consistent.

Constancy and consistency are appreciated and paradoxical

I am ambivalent about the concept of the one true self, although I do see value in the quest for understanding what is essential and constant in our characters and traits, our natures.  Our need as human beings for constancy and consistency cannot be denied. It provides us with an anchor we can rely on to hold us steady, and it isn’t to be underestimated, particularly these days. Authenticity holds within it something of these qualities. The constancy and consistency of other human beings is appreciated. This form of reliability means I can count on…be assured of …. take for granted….something I need to feel secure. The more secure I feel, the freer am I to relax and not be on my guard for perceived threats.

And it is also true that becoming too fixed in our belief of what is consistent, constant and reliable as true and immutable about ourselves and others - what we can take for granted - although a comfort, is also a real danger (and we have only to look around us to see the pitfalls of this in the polarities and fixed images of those different from ourselves.) The paradox is we need constancy and consistency in our relationships and need to accept it’s not always possible to achieve or even helpful to have.  

Mediated through relationship

Authenticity is mediated through relationship. As such, it involves risk and it involves vulnerability; and at its core, deciding (consciously or unconsciously) how much of what I know of myself I can reveal or give voice to and still be ok enough (accepted, worthy of, seen as competent, sane, coping and so on) to enable me to engage with whatever brings me to coaching in the first place - be that good questions, a desire for development, workplace challenges or because I’m told I need it.

Authenticity in relationship is undoubtedly a close bedfellow of congruence and trust – the beautiful alignment of what is internal, unseen or hidden and what is expressed, visible or acted out. Alignment, harmony, transparency – what you see is what you get, no deceit.  I can trust my own reality of what I see in you. When that doesn’t pan out, the realisation is often painful.  I lose - or rather remove - my trust in you (although what I really lose is trust in myself and my own judgment of what is ‘real’)

Carl Rogers, whose work underpins much of my approach to working with others, puts this simply in his book ‘On Becoming a Person’: ‘In my relationships with persons, I have found that it does not help in the long run to act as though I were something that I am not…. It does not help to act as though I know the answers when I do not. It does not help to act as though I were a loving person if actually, at the moment, I am hostile……’

I know this to be true, and yet, as coaches, helpers, facilitators, we have to work out how much of our inner realities and in-the-moment experience is helpful to be expressed and to what end.  

Active authenticity

To my mind, one of the key qualities and skills of the authentic coach is understanding when ‘authenticity’ - wrapped up and presented as being honest - is a blunt instrument that helps no one and when sharing something challenging or personal smooths the way to more meaningful connection and greater levels of insight. And sometimes grace.  We must usefully bring a level of conscious choice to what we do express and how we intervene and what we actively withhold - and have some insight into our motivations and intentions in doing so.  Active authenticity is for me a way of describing this worked for awareness and consciousness; of the filters, biases, personal preferences and vulnerabilities of not knowing the human-being-as coach brings to the relationship.

An effective and authentic coaching relationship offers a space to surface and examine some of these concepts, of self and other, of relationship, our frames of reference and ways of knowing, our fixed or shaky beliefs, unwitting blind spots and human fallibilities and longings - to flex and nudge and stretch ourselves and our appreciation of more-than-ourselves and make room for the possibility of different perspectives and ways of being, of shifts, and ultimately of what is in our capacity and influence to change.    

Authenticity requires ongoing commitment

An authentic coach will have spent considerable amounts of time and effort engaging with all the above – essentially doing their own inner work - whilst developing, practising and honing the skills, knowledge and practical frameworks and tools that can be helpful to bring to the coaching relationship. They will know that this requires ongoing attention and commitment, that relying on what was learnt or gained in their ‘training’ or in the school of life will only stay alive through active reflective engagement with others and in staying open to shift and change and reconfiguration, by being nudged and stretched and open to new perspectives and learning themselves.     

Holding such a space requires presence, humanity, humility and diligence and the ability to bring our whole selves with as much ease as we can into the presence and in service of the other. This sometimes requires keeping ourselves out of the way.  Doing so fosters an atmosphere of enough safety and trust the ‘other’ can claim, rightly, as trust in themselves.  Authenticity in this respect is an active, worked at and intentional state and this does not make it any the less genuine or real. 

Have I found an alternative lexicon of words? Not really, but I’ve seen the value in minding my language.  

‘Don’t you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time, not what one wants to, but what one can?’  Edith Warton 

Marion Ragaliauskas