The New American Dream by Penelope Trunk

Author:Penelope Trunk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperink

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V.

Authenticity Will Get You What You Want

“To become your best self – a star, a great leader, a fulfilled worker – you need to know who you are and what you believe. Start now. It’s a lifelong process, and done honestly, it’s the process that makes almost any job intrinsically challenging and interesting.”

The old American Dream is too focused on money for it to be equally available to everyone. And it’s too focused on financial rank for us to say that everyone is starting out equal.

For the baby boomers, born to compete with each other, the American Dream seemed like a fun prize. For the generations that followed, who recognize how unattainable it is, it seems empty. When wealth accumulation is not possible, the door opens up for a dream that is more true to you. You have more room to be yourself. And of course, how to stay on a path that is true to yourself is a defining question of the New American Dream.

But a lot of people think that the business world is not compatible with authenticity. When the American Dream centered around economic competition, that was true; the workplace was a place for backstabbing, a place where you had to hide your vulnerability. Today, with a shift in the Dream, work is a path to interestingness, and kindness and authenticity are the measures we use to predict success.

What people value in business now is what they value in all of life, and that is a real connection. People are attracted to authenticity because the alternative is so disappointing: cliched conversations, empty promises and relationships with no soul. People need to see a genuine part of you and they need to relate to it.

The Harvard Business Review reports that authenticity is the trait that uniquely defines great leaders. Increasingly, boardrooms are leading discussions about how to make their CEO more authentic because authentic leaders are so much better at getting people to follow them.

The Amazon acquisition of Zappos was a major nod to authenticity. Amazon can sell shoes without buying a shoe company. But what Zappos had that was particularly valuable to Amazon was a genuine leader. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, is passionate about authentic leadership, and he was able to create an incredibly loyal staff and customer base by being his true self and encouraging other people to do the same. The workplace, to Hsieh, is a tool to get to one’s authentic self; Amazon valued that in the billions.

The power of authenticity hit me when I had a speaking engagement at the Richard Ivey School of Business in Ontario, Canada. In a post-event survey, the reaction of the students was very positive. It wasn’t the content of the speech they cited so much as the authenticity. I didn’t hide behind a podium. I didn’t use a PowerPoint slides as

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