I recently was asked to speak at an event about honesty.
Specifically, I was asked to speak about the role honesty plays in my business operations and about how being honest and forthcoming in a blog and newspaper column affects my personal life and well-being.
When I started working in digital media in the mid-aughts, a popular topic at related conferences was the so-called rise of authenticity — this concept that there would be a rise in the expectation of “realness,” “intimacy” and “honesty” from businesses and entrepreneurs.
Then, the idea was that digital media would personify the individual businessperson, the business, the product and everything in between. As a result, we as people would hold those entities to the same standards to which we hold those whom we know intimately. We don’t want to be lied to. We expect honesty. We show preference for avenues in which we feel honored and respected. We stick to whom we perceive to be members of our tribe.
Here we are, 10 years later, and many of the concepts we were discussing then — and their related terminology — since have fallen away. But the importance of authenticity has only grown stronger.
Having come of age during that time, my peers and I expect the institutions with which we engage to be open and transparent. Simply projecting an image of responsibility and goodwill while hiding behind a curtain of dishonest PR and marketing is no longer sufficient standard operating procedure.
We uniformly hold high regard for Edward Snowden, considered an enemy of the state by our government because of his exposure of something we all already knew — that there is a substantial disconnect between what we are told and what happens to be true. This reality goes against our ideal and expectation that the official story and actual story overlap.
We expect the truth, and businesses and corporate and state actors do better by telling it because whistle-blowing has become exponentially easier, as has the capacity of citizens to record and broadcast what they see. At some point, we’re going to have to reconcile the “serve and protect” mission of police forces nationwide with the more abstract, unsettling reality we have seen via citizen-captured YouTube videos — which trace their roots all the way back to the 1991 VHS tape of Rodney King severely being beaten by four Los Angeles police officers.
The message? Tell us the truth or someone will tell it for you. If you’re abusing your power or corporate authority, we’re going to find out and take action sooner or later. More millennials hold Snowden in higher regard than our government. What does that tell you about our expectations of honesty, transparency and authenticity?
It always has been sort of funny to me to hear the concepts of authenticity and honesty being discussed as a practice at professional conferences. I grew up working in restaurants, which are filled with delightful and sometimes shady characters, few of whom want for being authentic and straight-forward about who they are. My father was a veteran — a cook in the Navy — and he wore his truth on his sleeve. You always knew where he stood. “Be yourself” went without saying in my childhood, and I’m grateful for that. It wasn’t until much later when I realized how rare a gift that was. It certainly has helped me to be as honest as I expect the institutions that dominate my life to be. It has helped me particularly in articulating the voice you read here.
When you open your mouth or your heart, you open yourself to being vulnerable. You invite criticism and antipathy. This is one of the reasons that governments and businesses have trouble giving way to this turning tide. They’re not used to being told that they’re wrong, being challenged, or being held accountable.
Every time I write something and put myself out there, I am taken to task, and it sometimes is scary. There are a lot of angry boneheads out there who are full of hate and stupidity, and they’re ready to spew it. But I also hear from folks who want to engage, share about themselves, offer a different perspective or experience or simply agree, and that is a beautiful opportunity. I grow by being myself and engaging on those terms.
As expectations of authenticity and honesty on the part of all actors become more widespread, even organizations and institutions terrified of this shift will stand to benefit by embracing it.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.
