Authenticity is a big part of what we are all about here at ACT. Effective communication skills can rely on tried and trusted tools and techniques only so far. Without your own unique stamp of authenticity, your presentation may come across as glib, banal, or just plain dull. An audience wants to know who you are among all the facts, figures, strategic directions and calls to action. This means drawing on the part of your personality that people like or admire and using it as the vehicle for your message.
All well and good but according to an article I read today in Wired Science’s Wired.com, it’s as well not to dig too deeply into our psyches to find that inner voice of authenticity, for while rummaging around in the drawers of our personalities we may well encounter the dark side!
In an article called “Why you can’t keep your foot out of your mouth” Harvard Psychology Professor Daniel Wegner explains why it is that the harder we try not to say or do something unfortunate the more likely we are to slip and do it anyway! According to Wegner it happens to many of us “when we’re really striving for something, when we’re under extreme stress or high mental load, that’s when we tend to get these ironic effects.” Like when we’re presenting to an audience or the board, or on live TV for instance!
Someone once asked me if I was ever worried that I might inadvertently say the “F” word on live TV. It had honestly never occurred to me….until that person put the very idea into my head. For the next few weeks I could think of nothing else while on live TV except “Don’t say “F”, don’t say “F”. I must have looked like a startled guppy during those particular broadcasts. The good news is I never have said the “F” word on TV. The bad news is I have fallen badly to foot in mouth disease on other occasions.
Many years ago I worked on a radio station and promoted local bands by playing their stuff on my show. One of the local musicians only had one hand, but that didn’t stop him being a very capable and creative talent. A few years after leaving the station I bumped into him on the street and asked him whether he still played in the band. “I do” he said. “Great” I replied “It’s always good to keep your hand in.” I wished the pavement could have swallowed me up. That cringingly awful faux pas haunted me for years – to be precise until exactly ten years later when I met him again. Remembering my horrible blunder I willed myself to be extra careful. The conversation was going well until he asked me “I’d like to work at the radio station, what do you think I should do?” To which I replied “Great idea, you should apply, they can always use an extra hand.” I kid you not, it took me fully ten years to make the same exact blunder twice!
According to Wegner’s research these gaffes are fairly common among all of us. So if you can bear to remember them, why not share your less than stellar “authentic” moments with us here on the website.
Go on – it would make me feel so much better!
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Howard, this is too tragically true! And I have to hand it to you for pointing it out
I remember presenting to a large group from Hewlett Packard’s storage division and comparing something to a hard drive crash and saying I was sure it was something they were all familiar with. The groans and boos of that remark remain fresh to this day. But I laughed with them and shook my head in regret. Fortunately they soon forgave me. They knew my intent was not malicious and somehow my bumbling made me even more human and I think the rest of the presentation was even better received because of it.
I guess the lessons I see here are that we tend to attract or grow what we give energy to. I don’t mean this in any sort of “Secret” way but I do think this is an axiom of attention. And if a fear gets aroused and we feed it… well, Freud stayed pretty busy dealing with the returns of the repressed, in the form of Freudian slips and worse.
I am curious though to hear if our readers have had similar slippages and what was the aftermath.