Why You Can’t Fake Your Feelings

As our clients, those we’ve trained and others who’ve attended our seminars, know, we constantly and consistently teach “tell the truth, tell it all and tell it first.”

We also stress authenticity.  If you don’t believe it, to the core of your being, don’t say it.  Unless you’re Al Pacino or Meryl Streep, you can’t fake sincerity – and you shouldn’t even try. Besides being true, it has to be real and heartfelt, whether it’s a simple statement of fact or an apology.

One proponent of this philosophy is Carol Kinsey Goman, whose writings we often use in our newsletters.  Carol recently wrote this:

I was once asked by the Senior Vice President of Human Resources to work with a leader whose micro-management was limiting her team’s effectiveness.  When I met with the client, (let’s call her Judith), she was effusive with her praise – going on and on about how much she had heard about me and how delighted she was to have me as her coach. Soon, I noticed that her smiles, however bright, were seldom genuine.

Smiles are often used as a polite response to cover up other emotions, but these social smiles involve the mouth only. Unless you are expressing genuine pleasure or happiness, it’s hard to produce a real smile – the kind that crinkles the corners of the eyes and lights up the entire face.

Knowing that, I expected to discover that Judith wasn’t as delighted with me as she claimed, and that she was putting on a show for the HR executive’s sake. As time went on, it became clear that was the case. Judith had no interest in working with me (or any other coach), and no intention of changing her management style.

The one area of body language that is identical in all cultures is the seven basic emotions that people around the world express, recognize, and relate to in the same way. Discovered and categorized by Paul Ekman and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco, the universal emotional expressions are joy, surprise, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and contempt. Here is how they can be identified…

For the rest of Carol’s article, click here.

Photo Credit:  Ryan McGuire/ Gratisography