What We're Reading Now

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

3 February 2015

Allison read The Authenticity Paradox by Herminia Ibarra in the January-February 2015 Harvard Business Review magazine and appreciated one of the best explanations she’s seen for why faking it ‘til you make is an essential leadership (and life) skill.

Tags: allison read, leadership

Authenticity sounds like a good thing, right? Do an internet search on authentic leadership and you’ll find many articles, books, and courses that will help you develop a leadership style that is true to your genuine sense of self. There’s a lot that’s good about this approach to living and leading, but sometimes acting authentically can keep us from developing new behaviors and changing in healthy ways.

In the January-February 2015 Harvard Business Review cover story, The Authenticity Paradox, Herminia Ibarra makes a compelling argument for why leaders often need to fake it ‘til they make it if they want to continue to progress in their careers. He suggests that “because going against our natural inclinations can make us feel like imposters, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what’s comfortable.”

If you visit our Allison Partners office, you’ll find a list of phrases on the wall that are important to us. We call them “words (that) matter” to signify both that we believe that using language deliberately is one of the most significant choices we make when communicating and that there are some words with special meaning to us. (Check out Rachel’s blog post about our wall to learn more.)

Fake it ‘til you make it was one of the first phrases Rachel and I chose for the wall because after years of helping individuals and organizations change, we’ve learned that waiting for something to feel natural and authentic is a very slow and often futile way to get what you want in life. One of our favorite professors at Darden, Dr. Alec Horniman, constantly reminds his students that “leadership is a stage” and often you have to act. People are watching you all the time and behaving the way you inherently feel may or may not be what people need from you as their leader and often has unintended consequences.

I think you’ll appreciate Ibarra’s examples for how authenticity got leaders into trouble as well as his encouragement to approach faking it with a curious, experimental and “playful frame of mind.” He offers straightforward advice for how to mimic people you admire and set learning rather than performance goals. He’ll also challenge you to let go of “your story” because it may actually be holding you back since it doesn’t do justice to where you’re trying to go next. I believe Ibarra's article will help you to see that being inauthentic in support of your development goals may actually help you become the person and leader you’d truly like to be.

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