Ep 47: Authenticity vs Transparency: Why Being Real is the Key to Building Trust Online

Jan 10

Authenticity vs Transparency: Why Being Real is the Key to Building Trust Online

You and I are about to have a very honest conversation about the difference between transparency and authenticity. I'm going to talk to you about something I'm noticing in the online space that is becoming an epidemic, and I want you to help me stop it.

I was at an event that a friend was running the other day and there was a conversation that was brought up that is something I've talked about a lot inside of my life and inside of my business. You and I have never had this conversation but now is the time because I'm seeing it show up more and more.

It's not only impacting people's businesses, but it's impacting their personal lives as well. It's the difference between transparency and authenticity. You have probably heard both of those words being thrown around a lot in the online space. People want transparency in business and in government. We need to be more authentic, be you.

Confusion Happens

When confusion happens, we start to think that transparency and authenticity are the same things. When we do that, it paralyzes us from sharing genuinely online. Ultimately that prevents connection.

This takes us back to my Community Cultivated Framework™. One of my main four pillars is connection. If you've ever taken any of my programs or heard me speak, you've heard me talk about how safety is at the foundation of connection. Safety requires trust, and trust requires authenticity, not transparency.

What Is Authenticity?

Authenticity by definition means that you're being true to your own personality or character, or that you're not false or an imitation. This is an authentic $100 bill versus being an imposter or imitation of a $100 bill. Just like people that are presenting a false version of themselves.

Whether we realize it or not in the online space, many of us have built our following or influence by imitating others instead of being true to who we really are and our personality and character. Maybe at some point, we were told that we were too much or not enough. Maybe we looked at what everybody else was doing and just decided to do that.

Maybe we felt the need to be more interesting. It feels like a lot of people online are a character. Like something you would see on a TV show. I'm just a homeschool mom from Nashville with a messy house. I only wear makeup when I have to. I don't have exciting stories to tell and spend most of my time within my little town. We're not traveling around the world. We don't have a whole lot of drama in our life. What is there to tell? What's the story? Who would want to pay attention to that? Let me make my life seem more entertaining. So we don't show up authentically, or maybe we don't even show up at all.

What authenticity means is that we are who we say we are. We present ourselves to our community exactly as we truly are.

What Is Transparency?

There is a difference between authenticity and transparency. There is no real definition that has to do with people being transparent. Unlike authenticity, which has a definition that is connected to how we show up in the world, transparency does not have a definition like that. It really just means you can see through it.

In the online space, we have defined transparency to mean no secrets and no boundaries. That's not healthy. Boundaries are set to protect us. Not to help us hide, not so that we disappear, but to protect us.

I’ll be honest, It feels incredibly risky to be fully transparent with anyone. I struggle sometimes to be fully transparent with my husband, whom I very much love and trust, much less being fully transparent with some stranger on the internet.

Showing Up

I'm reading a book about boundaries, and it talks about how when we get hurt by people because we didn't uphold a boundary or people knowingly crossed a boundary we often close off out of protection. This leads to people not showing up for their community because they've been burned.

I've witnessed it first hand with dear friends who were hurt very badly because they had trusted their community. They had trusted the internet with their story and their life, and it came back to hurt them deeply. When we open up fully like that, we open ourselves up to be hurt deeply.

Many still keep their community at a distance. Boundaries are good and healthy, but some of you are not showing up anymore. You used to feel connected to your community, and you're coming to me saying, “my community is dead. There's no engagement. What happened? I don't understand.”

You stopped showing up. You were afraid of getting hurt, which is fair. You needed time to heal, which is fair. But now it's time to come back. It's time to come back with healthy and strong boundaries, but show up for your community because they're missing out on you.

Building Connection

My desire is to show up consistently and authentically for my community. I desire that when people meet me in person, having known me online, it doesn't feel like they've been bamboozled. I want them to leave thinking, “she is just like I thought she would be.”

That means that they have to feel like they know me. They need to know that behind that put-together girl on stage is a Jesus-loving, homeschooling mom and now grandma who loves avocados, smoothies, and paddle boarding.

If you know me as just the community expert or just the retention expert, you may want to work with me because you don't know anybody else that does the same thing. If there is someone else doing the same thing as me and you have a better connection with them because they have shown up authentically, you may choose to work with them over me even though I have more experience and better results. And guess what? I wouldn't blame you for doing it.

Question For You

So let me ask you this. How many people are you missing out on in your business and in your life because we like to buy from people that we are connected to? We want to buy from people that we trust and we can't trust people that we don't know. And I'll tell you what, it's not just about how it'll grow your business and your community, although it will. It's about how it will help you grow too.