Kelly welcomes the always provocative Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic back to the podcast to talk about his new book: “Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead).” 

The idea of ‘authenticity’ is seen as such a valuable commodity that we talk a lot about how important it and yet, do we really want to see everyone’s authentic self? 

“That is a good starting point. And I think first, you know, the reason why we might crave authenticity is because actually we don’t get it that often. But I think it’s one of these cases of be careful what you wish for, because a world in which people would truly be themselves in the sense of kind of displaying their unfiltered, uninhibited and uncensored thoughts and emotions would really be barbarian, almost medieval. Society and civilization have progressed in a way that enables people to be kind to each other and to project their most civil or pro-social tendencies. And of course, that doesn’t mean being a fraud or a phony, but it does mean curating or editing yourself, especially when it comes to your professional self and the workplace.” 

I guess this leads to a question of how well can we even know ourselves to know if we are being authentic? 

“Modern social psychology and neuroscience align in basically decades of evidence and research saying that the one single thing that most of us have in common is that we bullshit ourselves all the time about who we are and the story we tell ourselves about who we are. It generally has little resemblance to how other people see us. So, our self-views are mostly disconnected from our reputations or our peer views. And this is important to understand. Because if you ask people whether they’re being authentic, they might feel that they’re authentic, but if you ask people who work with them, they might say, you know, they’re just being a jerk.” 

So this book really is a cautionary tale around being ourselves all the time everywhere. 

“Society in general is constantly telling us that we have to express ourselves. We shouldn’t worry about what other people think of us. I think I tell the true story in the book of one of my employees who came to my office for a performance review wearing this t-shirt with the caption, ‘Just be you, they will adjust.’ And I know he was wearing it with good intentions thinking that this was kind of the epitome or a mantra for a happy culture and workplace. But it did tell me something else. Do you realize how narcissistic that is? First of all, if we all wear that t-shirt, the world doesn’t function, let alone this company.”