The Debate is Over
In an age where conversation is the most influential skill, we need to rethink what it means to be authentic. It's about creating an ideal us, not an ideal you.
Why are our smartest minds unable to talk and converse like regular people? Why are panels so dull when podcasts are so interesting? Two words: media training. The comms industry is stuck preparing people for the media TV-interview sprints of the 2000s, when the primary medium for building trust and influence in 2025 is a conversation that can last for years.
When you see an exec in public seem inauthentic it is because someone forced them to act that way, usually by training them “to be an authentic leader.” After 3 months, the executive is a shell of their former selves. The executive acts like a child whose parents got them too dressed up for Sunday school, but in reverse. The ties get removed; the Hermes brooches are plucked from jackets; their handlers deprive them of all the things that make them comfortable and make them discuss only what bores them or what they hate. The comms profession is releasing cringe into the mainstream like a punctured oil tanker filled with “slay” and “yaas.”
The master comms skill of our time is conversation, and most execs are left unprepared for it. They have been trained to debate, bringing aggressive or curated personalities that can’t sustain a conversation for long without seeming twisted, fake and awkward. Comms people like me make a lot of money with scary stories of aggressive TV interview tactics. It’s not enough for executives to maintain conversations that are essentially public, endless and core to their brand. Modern leaders know how to lead and follow a conversation, and when they need to lead it, and when they need to follow it.
The Misery of the Kanel and Peynote
My friend and former colleague, Chris Brummitt, just this week noted that two panels he had prepped an exec for were wrecked by what he called a Kanel or Peynote: where someone seeks to “win” a panel by dominating the conversation within an uninterrupted list of talking points about how awesome their business is (statistical sidenote: chances of Kanel rise in proportion to chances of Manel). In the age of the TV interview, where time is a zero-sum fight, this tactic made sense. It makes no sense in an age where people can listen to truly fascinating people discuss everything from AI to literature to mental health. Thought leadership is not selling more loudly in public, it’s about being able to influence people through what you have in common, a shared emotion, a shared excitement. This is not a winning tactic in modern politics, but then democratic politics builds to an all-or-nothing vote, whereas business is always on and can’t afford the industry-level lack of trust that modern political tactics produce. People trust their peers more than authority figures: why do comms people train their leaders on acting like dominating authority figures, especially and even when that goes against their personality?
Just Dance, But Only If You Like Dancing
Being low-energy authentic means finding a style of thinking and speaking that relaxes you in public, as a leader, as a communicator. No one is entirely authentic in public, just as no one is entirely authentic in front of their in laws. You select the mask that is easiest and the most fun to wear, which is the one that brings out the best in you.
I thought of this when reading about politicians in Singapore singing to camera. The Prime Minister Lawrence Wong started it: the Singapore media has made his guitar playing into 80% of the proof that he has a personality. Other candidates saw that and instead of thinking “I should showcase my hobby” thought “I must sing.” Cue: the weirdest form of karaoke on the planet across Singaporean TikTok. If they were running for office, they were singing. While the elections in Canada and Australia were seen as referenda on closer ties to Trump's America (people don't want it), I followed the Singapore election for the impact of “spontaneous authenticity.” It didn't cost the PAP much electorally, but it shows how being authentic can feel like an act of desperation. There is another way.
In the boss-level mode of failed authenticity, the PAP released a speech that included the spontaneous, planned cry from a supporter. I don't object to faking the cry from the crowd, I object to having a candidate unprepared to react to it without it being written down for them. And the candidate Edward Chia says he actually rejected the tactic.
Anyone who can't get a client to react to a friendly cheer from the crowd naturally is committing comms malpractice. The comms and political professions are in a state of transition, and they still prepare clients for the cavalry of television, as the tanks of TikTok, podcasts and LinkedIn video roll over the hill. Soundbites won't save you. Bridging won't help. All of these short-term, high-stakes, high-energy tactics can be kept up for minutes, but not for days. Not for months. Not for years.
Low-Energy Authenticity: Find the persona that liberates you
Comms is a long game now: a conversation, not a fight; attention-sustaining rather than attention-grabbing; fluid rather than forceful; consistent and always-on rather than event- and cycle-driven. Winning arguments is no longer a short-term game of cycles and interviews, people (and not brands) need to be a part of constant conversations. Faking that is too exhausting over time. Be yourself, as the make up brand puts it, but better.
In my coaching these days, people have been told what they should say so much that they forget what they want in life, bullied into believing a set of acceptable behaviors pulled from pseudo-science (power-posing!) and a post-Covid Gen Z melange of mental-health wellness concepts, contradictory empathy and overly crafted lines. It can take them weeks of coaching to reconnect to their core values, their passions and their honest goals, but when they do, everything clicks into place. Then as we move on to comms and leading we design the personae that you can most easily maintain that will get the job done.
One client called it “Low-energy authenticity.” They had spent too much energy being what they thought others wanted them to be. By focusing on who they actually were, the energy costs of leading fell. As the weeks went by, they built themselves back up, experimenting with giving tough feedback in ways that felt aligned with their values, or deciding how to communicate an intense personal decision to employees and clients. Ultimately, it turned out to be all too easy. When we focused on the easiest way to express yourself while getting the job done, things became much easier. Imagine that.
Stop Telling People How to Behave
I recently spoke to a comms person for a top CEO who put it slightly differently. When I noted that their CEO seemed both more irritating to many people, but also so much easier to figure out as a human being that actually liked things and had clear passions we can map to the company's strategy, she nodded. She described how the CEO had spent years being told who to be and, worse, how to act. The comms goal of trying to please everyone had forced the CEO to be many things instead of one person. I thought of the Jean Cocteau line about someone being as nervous as a chameleon standing on tartan. The strategy had now evolved to simply presenting two (and sometimes more) options for who he wanted to be over the next year, based on who he already was, and based on how people were likely to react. She kept on repeating “It all comes from them” when I mentioned a few gambits that I felt had worked out well. Still, that is the point of truly great comms. Low-Energy Authenticity is how everything you do for comms is as close as possible to what you would do anyway.
Do You Know How to Find Other People Interesting?
As the Brussels policy comms strategist Habib Msallem pointed out, any time you see someone acting natural in public, it is because they worked hard to do it in private. In seeing how the British royal family’s staff showed up to events, he noticed how skillfully they kept conversations going with people. When people get demoralized about their own lack of finesse in similar situations, he would point to the hours of work it takes to get there. Prince William has been taking an interest in boring people since he was little. If you believe that art is a way to skillfully represent nature in a way that nature cannot do on its own, then good conversation is the most universal art form: we all have the talent for it, and the opportunity. We can be artists at this if we choose and if we do, we have the opportunity to create art any time we meet for coffee.
Learning from the Golden Age of Conversation
The last time conversation mattered this much was the 19th century, when writing didn’t get you quite as far into the upper reaches of society as conversation. Writing bestsellers could win over the ever expanding middle class; being a great conversationalist got you into that Downton Abbey weekend stay. The Principles of the Art of Conversation by John Pentland Mahaffy – one of the best talkers in, Dublin, which was widely recognized as the talking capital of Britain – lays out all the golden rules of conversation for today, and it should be burned into comms trainings alongside pivoting and bridging. A few of his rules have helped me unlearn all my comms laws about soundbites:
Listen with sympathy : Mahaffy picks the word sympathy where we might say empathy, because the word empathy had not yet been coined. Yet, in the context of conversation, sympathy does work better. It gives a slightly different purpose for active listening. From the Greek, empathy is to feel the emotions of a person inside yourself; sympathy is to “feel with,” to share an emotion, just as a symphony is music made with a lot of voices. A lot of us have learned the power of active listening as a leadership, sales and coaching tool. A conversation is a chance to create an emotion together, nearly always a happy one.
Prepare for anything but don't be scripted: As my co-professor at IESE Carlos Salas says, you should come to any conversation bearing gifts. Like a bottle of wine or box of chocolates they're a few news items, passages from books, funny lines, amazing stats that you heard, questions you think are interesting for the crowd. Rather than coming with a list of soundbites to check off, these are things you know will delight people and get the conversation going.
Know when to end: when you see someone's eyes light up when you talk, that is your moment to hand the torch to them. Your goal, remember, is to get others talking, not have them admire your talk.
Correction kills the conversation: Constant disagreement is exhausting for the participants. Fox News and CNN might live and die by shots being fired constantly, but you can tell it’s exhausting for the participants and for the audience, very little sticks in the head beyond a few soundbites, and a mild sense of impotent range.
The age of the podcast has turned conversation back into a vibrant medium again, and all these rules seem fresh. Weirdly, when I look down this list, Joe Rogan emerges as the person who obeys this list the best. You might dispute who he gets onto his show, and who he validates, but with seemingly very little effort, he can make anyone else sound interesting. Contrast that with some of the stars of the broadcast TV era who struggle to hold down a podcast conversation without catching people out. I also notice how people who were media-trained to death are suddenly exposed in the slow burn of a podcast – they run out of things to say around the 10th minute. Simple questions that most humans can answer baffle them.
Low-energy authenticity is all about engaging with people by listening and figuring out what you tcan bring to the table to light them up. It’s not natural, because listening is the hardest act of our social-media species. It’s hard because it goes against the comms industry’s definition of “winning:” landing scripted talking points instead of learning the right instincts for improvisation. But it’s genuine and it’s an art because finding that intersection between yourself and the person you’re talking to creates beauty. The old sense of authenticity was all about creating a perfect you. Now it’s the least exhausting way to find an enjoyable us.
Fantastic article. I hadn't thought about how media training (the little I've done) prepared me for last decade's media.