Written by: Steven N. Adjei, Senior Level Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
True Authenticity is a choice, But how do we choose? My new Authenticity Framework ®️ will help you make that choice easier.
''Traversed'' by Kerrie L Clark, Plymouth, England 2023
I'm not in this world To live up to your expectations Neither are you here to live up to mine, yeah
I don't owe no one any obligation So everything is fine, fine (But) Learn to love To love your brother Don't covet your neighbour I said I am that I am I am, I am, I am
- I am that I am, Peter Tosh, 1977.
‘’So, what am I really about’’?
This is a question I had been asking myself for decades. And I finally had the answers – from two sources: a coach and a book.
In the previous edition of this newsletter, I explained why the concept of authenticity as an inherent concept is a fallacy, and how we need to choose the person we want to be by identifying the values that resonate with us.
But the truth is:
Some values resonate with us more than others.
This was brought to bear personally from two sources, the first from my coach, Dan after three intensive sessions.
What I cared most about – my principal value, was Empathy.
The second source was from a book, The Values Compass by Dr Mandeep Rai. I met her at a conference in London, and she kindly gifted me a signed copy.
I took the exercise she recommended to find my values and five resonated strongly with me: Kindness, Resilience, Togetherness (Inclusivity), Faith and Impact.
I feel the most authentic when I can practice these values consistently.
Where do these come from? Is it my nature – what I was born with? Or from nurture, my personal life journey? I don’t know. I just knew that they were just – there.
One early morning during my daily meditation, a framework for true authenticity came to me. It was straightforward. I hurriedly wrote it down and called it The Authenticity Framework®.
Find It ➡ Live it ➡ Show it ➡ Tell it. Here it is in detail:
1. Find it
The process I explained above marks the first stage of authenticity.
Find it. What are the values, the habits, the feelings that make you tick? Dr Rai’s book and my coach, Dan were incredibly helpful in helping me distil mine. Meditation, Journaling and Personality Tests also played a huge role.
After finding those values (five at the most) you need to run them through what I call the Values Acid Test.
The overriding test for authenticity is simple. Love.
Love is the overriding value. It is the acid test. The foundation. If your values do not espouse real love and concern for others then are you really being authentic? I don’t think so.
Adam Grant postulates this perfectly:
‘’I was just being myself’’ is not an excuse for disrespectful behaviour. It signals a lack of concern for others. Authenticity without empathy is selfish Authenticity without boundaries is careless. Being true to yourself should not come at the expense of being kind to others’’
So according to this test, my other traits – procrastination, laziness, bitterness, etc needed to be dealt with.
They failed the Values Acid Test.
Then we could move to the next stage…
2. Live it
My friend Simon Alexander Ong, award-winning coach and author of Energize, often says that the longest journey of life is the one from your head to your heart. Being authentic doesn’t just happen. After finding it, we then have to live with it.
Live it is the daily battles we have to fight to align our actions with our values. To align our heads with our hearts. To internalise the values we believe resonate with us.
We know we are living our authenticity when we are consistently winning more of these battles than we are losing. Living it is modelling our values to ourselves. The third and next step is to model it to others.
3. Show it
Showing our authenticity means we are now living externally what we believe internally. We cannot be kind to others unless we first are kind to ourselves. We cannot practice empathy for others if we are not empathetic to ourselves. What we are in private inevitably will spill out, especially under pressure for all to see. We love because we believe we are loved. Show it means we are so confident in our lived internal values that we can confidently model it to others. This is what all the authentic leaders we believe in and aspire to be like did. They were models to themselves, and subsequently, to us. But just showing limits our reach. We also need to say it…
4. Tell it
Tell it is the last and the least of the Authenticity framework. But it’s the one we tend to use the most.
But as we all know, talk is cheap.
We can only tell it if we have found it, lived it and showed it.
It is why the speeches of Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi, were so powerful. Their authenticity showed through their speeches and made them better speakers because they actually believed and had lived what they were saying. Their authenticity gave them credibility.
Hence our love and admiration for the lion (from a distance 😂 ). It knows it is the king of the jungle. It shows it by the way it walks and behaves. And it tells it by its roar.
That’s why the lion is possibly the most authentic beast on the planet.
So, if you want to be authentic:
Find it. Live it. Show it. Tell it. In that order.
Three ways to work with me:
Could you hire me to speak at your event? I specialise and love to talk about the things others don’t – pain, failure, legacy, struggle, resilience, authenticity, real diversity and inclusivity.
Buy my book. You won’t regret it. It's won four awards has been a number one international bestseller and it's real and raw. The link is below.
Mentoring and Strategy. I love small businesses and I’d love to mentor you, the owner and help you grow. I’m an accredited mentor, and our firm, the StrategyBoutique has done strategy for dozens of SMEs. It's what my second and upcoming book, Chasing Permanence is all about.
Let's talk here.
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Steven N. Adjei, Senior Level Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Steven N. Adjei is an award-winning British-Ghanaian best-selling author, poet, speaker, healthcare consultant, entrepreneur, and pharmacist. He is the founding partner of BlueCloud Health (part of the Emerald Group), an advisory and consulting firm with offices in London, Dubai, and Delhi with clients all over the world. He has an MBA from Warwick Business School.
His first book, (Pay The Price: Creating Ethical Entrepreneurial Success Through Passion, Pain and Purpose) released on 17 October 2022 was an instant international bestseller in 18 categories on Amazon, has garnered 2 prestigious awards, and has received critical acclaim throughout the world. He is currently working on his second book, “Chasing Permanence: thriving you and your business in a constantly changing world” , set to be released in early 2024.
