Disc is still around – it looks a bit more sophisticated today
Every snake has its day
Back in the day we used to recruit people on some DISC test thing where you were asked a lot of questions and you got analysed for “how you saw yourself”, “how others saw you”, “how you wanted to be seen”, The DISC stood for Drive- Influence-Security and Compliance and this allowed us to see objectively what we couldn’t work out through common sense. Were we dealing with a driven entrepreneur , an influential salesperson, a secure but unambitious backroom person or a compliance officer (I guess we’d say someone good for governance).
I always thought it a great strength in someone to have the same DISC profile throughout. If I’d had the word in my vocabulary, I would have called that person “authentic”, but this kind of person was regarded by my friends in HR as dangerously honest and likely to be moulded into the organisation – “too much his own man/woman“.
So I ended up working with people who were striving to be what they weren’t and put on a smile when they were sad, were bold when they were worried and who you couldn’t trust much further than you could throw them. Their insincerity mad them malleable and they were off climbing the greasy poll while the honest Joe and Joline, sat at the bottom wondering when they would fall of. Many are still up the top with knighthoods to boot. (bitter- moi?).
Letting software tell the story
Which of course brings us round to photo-shopping your image to tell the story that the photo didn’t quite manage.
Did Kate/Catherine expect to get away with it? Wasn’t she advised by her agents against it? Was she being authentic by being like everyone else and lying about how she really looked?
My old mucker Andy Walker came up with a photo of me without a black front tooth (which I got in a fight). For a time, the public image of me was of a man with perfect teeth.
I have lost that photo and now appear , as I am , a man with dodgy dentals. This of course does not make me any worse at doing my job but it clearly marks me down in the corporate beauty parade. I doubt anyone has turned me down for it, but that’s how others see me.
That’s what we all do
There is a social media herding effect which means we all produce posts that conform to the same unsaid rules. I say “unsaid”, but a high proportion of the messages I get on linked in are unsolicited and teaching me how to use linked in to maximise my message. You pay for a linked in makeover so that others see you the way you aspire to see you. This is a kind of authenticity that I don’t aspire to , but you could say you aspire to be authentically linked in.
One of my friends is currently starting a new job and getting a lot of media training, I notice he is already putting out posts on linked in and elsewhere which are clearly ghost-written. His picture has changed, he has become a new man in a matter of weeks. But when I talk with him face to face, he is the same great guy and I wonder how long this most authentic of people will carry on like this. I don’t suspect for ever but I may be wrong.
Of course you can be too honest for your own good and a degree of circumspection is required however you behave. Unless you don’t go out at all, you will find yourself tagged somewhere, you cannot not have an online presence. That’s life! The best we can hope for is that we like ourselves enough to not mind how others see us, as we can’t control that.
Can you still look at yourself in the mirror?
Of all the silly things about the Kate/Catherine thing is that “C” sees herself as an authentic Mum by photo-shopping herself. This is a really desperate statement but one she has committed to on social media.
When we deem “authenticity” as the shallow-fake of photo-shop, we open the door to the concept of “authenticity” as the deep fake of scamming. When it becomes acceptable to touch your image up – because that’s what people like you do, then you’ve lost control of how you look to yourself. You will end up not being able to look at yourself in the mirror.