Exploring The Authenticity Upgrade Part 1 of 4

 Cristina and Alex kick off a mini-series around their book, The Authenticity Upgrade: Rebooting Leadership for Real Humans, arguing that culture and authenticity—not org charts and processes—determine whether change sticks. They move past theory into day-to-day practices: how leaders (and humans) can reduce friction, align to values, and create environments where people can show up fully. Along the way, they name the early signals of misalignment—dread, resistance, and over-functioning—and frame a “better way” anchored in flow, trust, and lived values. 

Transcript

“Cristina Amigoni: If your behaviors and mindsets in your culture do not actually follow values, it really doesn't matter what perfect organizational structure and org chart and process you have.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to a special episode of Uncover the Human. Today, we are starting a little mini-series that we have going on, because we are launching a book. We have our book coming out within the next couple of weeks of this podcast. We wanted to do something a little bit different. So, we actually are going to be interviewed by Aaron Wilson. Thank you so much for joining us and being here, Aaron.

Aaron Wilson: Thanks.

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks. Good luck.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: Good luck keeping us on task.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's not what we said. He wouldn't need it to do that. It's okay.

Aaron Wilson: That’s okay. I'm good there.

Alex Cullimore: That's the implied task anytime we're doing this.

Cristina Amigoni: The title of the book is The Authenticity Upgrade: Rebooting Leadership for Real Humans.

Alex Cullimore: This is our guide to some human-centric leadership, so the ability to both look inward at yourself, as well as investigate some of your relationships and how you work with group dynamics to improve human-centric leadership. We're tagging on some pieces about AI, because that's important today.

Cristina Amigoni: It's hard not to.

Alex Cullimore: Unavoidable today.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Well, what I would say is I personally have read the book, so I'm interested in understanding, first of all, why you wrote this book and why now.

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, the why we wrote a book and then we'll get into this one. It's something we've been talking about for quite a few years. It's definitely something that I have been wanting to do for a number of years. The opportunity, or the pressure or both came up and it was like, how about now we're going to write a book? This particular book, it's turning out to be a collection of a lot of things that we've learned and what we've seen really helped live that authentic human life and also for ourselves. Also, how do we then build from that for our relationships and in leadership positions for groups?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I would agree with that. I think that this book became what we wanted to talk about, as far as focusing on humans at the workplace and being able to think about, hey, what does it mean to be human both internally for yourself? How do you bring that to work? Then what does that look in relationship to other people, as well as doing things like leading groups of people and deciding how you want to approach that in a more human-centric fashion? That was one thing that we had bonded on when we first started this company was, hey, there needs to be some humanity in the workplace.

The more we got through developing our own programs and being able to help with a lot of different companies, we got more excited about, hey, let's talk about this in book format, so we can share this a little bit more broadly. How do we help people be human-centric in their leadership and at work?

Cristina Amigoni: Really going to that practical side of, there's a lot of talk and much necessary talk, but there is a lot of talk about being people first, human first and all of that, but it's like, how do you actually do it? What do you actually do from a day-to-day basis to understand human nature, work with it, rather than against it? You'll hear that sentence and you'll read that in the book quite a bit, both for ourselves, because it's got to start with us and with everybody around us.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That was one thing that we definitely noticed a few times. There's lots of leadership books with a lot of the great ideas and they make sense in the abstract. What we wanted to do is give some more hand holds, some more how-to in the middle of that. How are you going to actually engage in this? I like how you put that, Cristina, because it is just the day-to-day practices of what does that look like when you actually put pen to paper, put the rubber to the road, whatever you want to call it? What does it look like to live that out, instead of just saying, “Yes, I want to be able to appreciate my people,” or, “Yes, morale should be higher.” Wait, what do you actually do to get engagement? What do you actually do to keep engagement? How do you have a better culture?

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed, yes.

Aaron Wilson: Did I hear why now?

Alex Cullimore: Why now?

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, why now? No, you did not hear why now. Why now? Besides just the pressure of stop saying, I need to write a book and actually write the book. Besides just wanting to go through that experience, why now? I would say, a lot of what we've done in the last six years of Siamo existing and before that has been thinking about a certain way to show up and creating human-first culture and creating people-first cultures. I think what we've gotten – we've had the privilege to do in the last five, six years is actually putting it in practice with some of the stuff that we've talked about, like what's the day-to-day for me? What's the day-to-day for me with one other person? What's the day-to-day for me as a leader, as a group?

Seeing the results of that, seeing what comes back, noticing people's light bulbs and people's even shifts and transformations with how they approach and what that's been giving them as possibilities, as ways of really looking at the world and looking at how they show up in the world differently. Honestly, having all of that almost feedback on some things that were just theories that in our heads were like, this is the way it should be done. Why isn't it being done that way? Let's try it out and see what happens. We've seen what happens.

Alex Cullimore: I think that's a good way of putting it. It was like a threshold amount where we had done this enough that we started to get that feedback enough times of this is what's working. When we started to work with new groups of people and you'd start to see some of the same patterns appear, we're like, “Hey, there's something here. We can distill this into something that will help people more generally.” We had been approaching things situationally. We had ideas for how things could be helped. The more we started to see some similarities, the more realized we could reuse some of the stuff that we had been doing, and the more we realized we have enough to put into that books that people can use, without having to have us in the room, or having us try and decide what exercises are important right now.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. Well, and also knowing that a lot of the feedback that we've received back is practicing some of the principles that we talk about in the book and practicing this day-to-day different ways of looking at things has allowed people to not just do it in front of us, because we're there. But also, it's stuck with them. Years later, people still come back and show up in a certain way, or reflect, and notice when others on show up in that way. The fact that somehow some of these things have stuck in the core behavior mindset of adult humans has provided that validation of like, maybe we should write this down and see what an actual journey would be for somebody from beginning, not to end, but from the beginning into a path.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I guess, the real answer to the why now is because we couldn't have gotten everything together sooner, but we believe this is helpful, and that this should be out as soon as we could possibly make it. That's now.

Cristina Amigoni: It's now.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, interesting. It sounds like, there's been some purposeful intention and also action behind where you are today and where you want to take this message in this book, which I find to be really, really useful and practical from my perspective. In terms of going forward, what do you think most leaders and organizations miss about culture and authenticity in what we've been talking about today?

Alex Cullimore: I'll start with authenticity, because I think it's easy to say authenticity and then forget what the values of authenticity are. The fact that authenticity is this thing that we can access and feel more comfortable and then end up being able to run with the most energy we possibly can have is when we can – When we're authentic, we have the ability to just be ourselves. I think that companies sometimes get so hung up on what has to be done, or what roles they've divvied out and what the job title says and what the org structure says and what the process says, that they forget that we're not just automatons to get plugged into where I'm now in a BA role, I'm now a PM, I'm now whatever, and I just do the tasks of that job.

It's a lot of, who is the actual person filling that role and how do they see the world and how does that help the organization as a whole? I think authenticity is often missed, because we are so busy trying to just picture the whole thing and forgetting that there's all the other parts of a human that get left out if you try and put it in a box. If you try and just leave them in a certain title in a certain area, or just believe that they should do something specific and that includes ourselves, we can absolutely put ourselves in these boxes.

We miss out on all of the potential that authenticity brings, and I think organizations can easily overlook that in the mayhem of trying to get to deadlines and make sure that everybody has some vague idea of clarity. So, if we can help people understand how useful authenticity can be, not just as like, oh, it's going to feel a lot better, but it's going to make your organization run a lot better. I'll leave the culture one for you, Cristina, [inaudible 0:09:35] culture one. Or are we going to split it?

Cristina Amigoni: You left me the easy one. Thank you for that one. I could have talked about authenticity.

Alex Cullimore: You can elaborate on authenticity.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, the culture one, which actually, it's a good thing. I just posted something about culture last week. I can go back to that. When we look at the culture, I mean, we've all read all the quotes and the memes, like culture in a company, it's really how somebody feels on Sunday night about going to work on Monday. It's the worst behavior you accept and all these things. Also, the big one, which is what my post was about, was culture, the famous quote on culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Well, since we have participated in and seen and guided quite a few transformations, whether they're organizational transformation, leadership transformations, all sorts of personal, individual and team transformations, we also know that culture will eat any type of change and transformation for lunch, dinner, and dessert. This is for Kyle, since his comment was about, what about dessert? Really, it goes back to that, like you can have the perfect organizational structure on paper, you can have the titles, you can have the roles, you can have the communication, the mandate, the posters that say like, “We are one team, or we all communicate, or we're de-siloing,” whatever is happening. You now have a leadership title, so now you're a leader. Just like you've been knighted.

None of those actually matter, unless the behaviors and the mindsets actually reflect that. It all really comes down to the behaviors and mindsets. A lot of that is if your behaviors and mindsets in your culture do not actually follow values, do not follow what's intended to be there, in terms of how people relate to each other and themselves, it really doesn't matter what perfect organizational structure and org chart and process you have. It still won't get you the results that you want. That's what it is. The culture is going to determine what you get, just like our behaviors and our feelings determine our outcomes.

I can wake up in the morning and think today, I'm just going to eat healthy and salads all day long. But unless, I am corely in that behavior and mindset, guess what's going to happen the minute I walk in the kitchen, and there's a cookie on the counter? It doesn't matter. Intention doesn't matter. What I write on paper, even on my journal, or what I tell somebody, doesn't matter, until I actually do it. Part of the culture piece, which we hope to illustrate in the book, is that behavior. How do we take the steps to change our behaviors and mindsets, so that then our outcomes and the culture will be the impact of that, will be what comes out of that, will be the result?

Alex Cullimore: The other thing that companies miss on culture is that the way we talk about it in the book is it's like a car running. When the car is running well, you don't notice it. When the culture is good, people are probably not talking a ton about the culture. I mean, if it's really great, maybe they'll start talking about the culture again. But there is a point in which the culture is good and everything is running and you can get the car from A to B and it will do the things, it will make the turns, it will get through weather, and that is all as expected. But you're not thinking about the culture then, you're just thinking about driving where you need to drive.

I think organizations sometimes think they have to force culture to be good. Then they talk about culture and wanting the culture to be good, which is a good intention, and you can absolutely do things to actively work on that. I think, yeah, sometimes we forget that it is the more invisible layer of things that just has to happen if you want things to go well, and that's why it ends up eating strategy for breakfast, because you want to try and take a car from A to B, but it's not actually functioning, you're just not going to get there. You can't make it. You can't force it. You can't pretend. You can't tell everybody we have great breaks if everybody can hear the squealing. It's not going to happen.

I think it's easy to forget that culture is when it's good, it starts to feel invisible. Then it can be hard to remember to maintain, because things just seem like they're fine. You're no longer necessarily focused on culture, or fixing the problems that are happening. You're now focused on moving. Sometimes that then eventually causes the culture to degrade, and so it's hard to remember it when it's going really well.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. To tie the two, authenticity and culture together, if you think about how most of us at least don't notice a culture that doesn't feel right, or we don't notice a good culture, just like the car that's functioning, until we experience one that doesn't feel right, where we don't actually feel good in it. Then we look back and are like, “Oh, wow. The culture in my last company was actually really good.” In it, we may not be as aware, because for good or bad, it's just the way it is. Our human brain does go to the negative more. The negative is more than the positive.

I noticed this and I've been thinking about it actually this weekend, and maybe that'll be one of my next posts, how Jannik Sinner was playing in the quarterfinals of the China Open. A lot of the posts and articles were highlighting how he lost the second set. He rarely loses. Unless, he's playing against Carlos Alcaraz. He rarely loses any sets. He usually wins straight sets. There's a lot of highlighting how he lost the second set, seven to five. Yet, there was no, or very little highlight on how he won the first set, 6-1, and the third set, 6-0, which is way harder than losing a set, 7-5, in tennis. But that's where our human brain goes. When there's a negative, we zoom into that and we highlight it.

That's when we realize like, “Oh, but my last set was much better.” Maybe in that set, you're not quite there, and the culture is the same. We notice. We tend to notice a good culture when it's gone, not when it's present.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. Really, when you talk about culture and authenticity as being the two primary pillars, really the two only pillars that will shift an organization, notwithstanding leaders, when you think about who you wrote this book for, was it for leaders, employees, teams, or someone else?

Alex Cullimore: As hard as it is to remember, sometimes leaders are humans, too. I think that we oriented this towards humans in general, but there is a real leadership angle to it, because leaders have the best ability to both digest and understand authenticity for themselves and work on culture. They can be the champions of culture that they want to see. Then they can help create the space, so that other people can do so. There's a huge portion of the book where we're focusing on finding your own authenticity and understanding what that means for you and understanding how you're going to have to work with yourself, because there's just obstacles we all face in our own personal behavioral changes. Understanding what we are facing internally helps us get some grace and compassion for ourselves, which helps us extend that to other people and understand the mechanisms that will help other people.

We really oriented this towards anybody that can help live more human lives and a huge aspect of that is leaders at work. Because I think we just had somebody on the podcast who's talking about how your manager has more of an effect on your mental health than your therapist, which just by virtue of how much time you spend with your manager versus your therapist every week is probably true. It's very true compared to like, what impact that has in your life and your therapist doesn't seemingly have control over your job and your livelihood, whereas, your manager feels like they do.

There's so much leverage, I think, in the managerial and leadership positions that we really wanted to especially give tools to leaders. They’re intended to be human tools that everybody will use, because leaders are humans and they need the human tools. We are orienting this also towards leaders specifically, because they have the greatest ability to take this and spread it to others in arenas where it really counts for mental health and for people's positive impact on their lives.

Cristina Amigoni: From an authenticity perspective, they have a huge role in allowing other people's authenticity to come out. It starts with their own authenticity, understanding that there is no one way to be a leader. How do I explore what my own authenticity and being a leader is for my own life, too? It doesn't have to be that I actually have direct reports. I'm constantly leading. We are leading our own decisions and our own actions. Very few of them don't impact anybody else. Most of them do impact anybody else. Even that's a leadership in itself, the fact that whatever we do, don't do, don't say how we show up impacts other people's lives.

Whether it's the cashiers at King Supers, when you're checking out your own kids, your friends, your family, and even the people at work. So, there's leadership components in all ways that we show up. Being able to have that authenticity when we show up understanding it, that's also what allows us to then reflect back to culture of like, oh, that culture was a better culture if we were to categorize than this culture, because I could be myself there. I felt valued as myself. I could be more authentic. It does go hand in hand. When it starts from the leaders, then we can actually – we have the responsibility to create that space for the people around us. We have the influence to be able to do that. Hopefully, we do.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah. You both have said, there has to be a better way. What does that better way look like in terms of human leadership, now we segue off of authenticity?

Alex Cullimore: That actually still ties significantly with authenticity, because some of that is really just being yourself. It’s very hard to be authentic and allow other people to be authentic. If you can start with yourself and get that authenticity, then that is better. It's not better just again, because it feels better. This is a way to help people get into their own flow. Flow is productive. It's productive for companies. It's productive for ourselves. It feels better. It's what gives us energy, instead of draining it. Even when we're completing things and doing things, we don't feel overwhelmed by it. We feel like we're more in flow, we're more connected, we're more aligned. If we can get those things, this is just a better way to live without continually experiencing friction, and without having the friction inside the workplace, or between the dynamics of teams, or internally in our own heads.

There's just a lot of areas where we live with friction somewhat naturally, but we don't have to just accept all of those. We can give ourselves a lot more space and energy back if we can resolve some of these points of friction in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it really is. It's a difference between swimming upstream and going with the flow, to use the word flow again. Yes, sometimes we're going to have to swim upstream. That's life. That's human life. There's so much we can do before we are burnt out and can't do it anymore. The better way is to really realize that for the most part, we're surrounded by pretty amazing humans. The amazingness, the potential of those humans and what they can do is really up to us to create that space and environment, and also provide the space and environment in some cases for those very humans to realize this is never going to be the space and the environment, where I can actually be my full self, my best self, myself, where I can go back to bed and get excited the next day and wake up again and do it all over.

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, you both describe some tough experiences with failed projects with low trust and disengagement. At what moment did you realize, this isn't just one company's problem, this is everywhere?

Cristina Amigoni: That 100th fail change project. In a few years, you just see it, you feel it.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think that we had those experiences and those were just particularly stinging experiences. It was very clear on some of the dysfunction in some of those. When you feel that, suddenly, I guess for me, it felt like you could see clarity looking into the past. You're like, “Oh, wait. This was actually present here. It wasn't as extreme, but I noticed this was true here. This was true here.” Then you start to project it to the other places you go, and then you start to get the experience of going to other places like, “Oh, okay. No, wait. This is pretty common. This is how this is happening.”

You start to learn about how humans work and operate internally with each other. You start to realize, okay, here's why this would end up in the same ruts over and over again. Not just culturally, but just for the US or not, this is just how humans are. We have certain proclivities that can get in the way of organizational function and just function in general. It was definitely just a combination of we've experienced this a bunch of times. There was, I think some crystallization that happened when we started to have particularly extreme experiences of like, “Oh, wow. The trust is so lacking here. Oh, wow, this is really harsh to how this leader is approaching the people.” Or whatever we were seeing, those, I think, were sharp enough and painful enough experiences that it did point out the similarities that we've been seeing, echoing through time and our other experiences in other places.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and especially sharing with each other, opening up and talking about them, then it made us like, oh, this is not just in my head. I'm not crazy to think that there's going to be a better way to do this. Somebody else does, too, who I respect and think very highly of. That also helps. Then you start hearing similar stories, or stories that relate and have a lot of common themes from other friends and other people working completely different organizations with completely different leaderships and dynamics. That's when you start seeing those patterns and thinking like, this doesn't seem like it's a unique problem, because there's a lot more people being miserable and thinking that work should be miserable, because they don't experience in a different way, that are now feeling like they can be themselves. They're not feeling valued. They're not feeling seen. This really is the common denominator. What's happening? It can't be that this is the way it is. There's got to be a better way for everybody to experience the vast majority of their adult life.

Aaron Wilson: I'm not supposed to ask like, what's the first sign they might be living out of alignment with themselves?

Alex Cullimore: First sign is hard to know. Unless, you really start to get attuned to it. Once you start to attune to like, when you feel you're in alignment or not, then you'll probably notice your own signs. It's anything that starts to – in my mind, it's anything that starts to feel like friction. There's those dreading moments before you go into work. There's dreading moments before you have to approach some situation. It doesn't have to be work. It could be just some relationship, some situation you're in in life. There's just a friction and a resistance to engaging with that that you'll start to feel and start to real – Not just the discomfort of like, “Oh, I'm not sure this will go well,” but the friction of like, “Oh, I don't want to do this.” Or, “Oof, just something doesn't feel right about this.”

Because we all have lots of things we have to lean into that are uncomfortable, that we do want to do. There are things we want to achieve that will be uncomfortable, and it will feel, perhaps, like resistance of fear. There's a difference between that resistance, where you're a little bit afraid that you might not be able to do something, versus afraid, or frustrated, because you don't want to engage in something.

Aaron Wilson: I liken that to dread.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, you feel it, you know it. I just saw a quote at some point this weekend that says like, when we say I don't know, it's not true. Our soul knows, our body knows. It's that. It just doesn't feel right. We are dreading it. We're procrastinating. We're postponing it. We don't want to talk about it. We want to avoid it. Once that starts accumulating, that's when you're like, maybe there's something off here. When you start dreaming about a different life, or a different type of work, that's when you know like, maybe this is not completely in alignment.

I also started listening to a podcast, where they were talking about high-functioning depression. In high-functioning depression, we get really busy. We actually don't know that we are in depression, because we're so busy and we're acting. If you look at depression as in the lack of action, then you're like, “Well, I'm not depressed.” The over-functioning also is part of the depression. It's that, just like, I'm on autopilot and I'm just going to go, go, go, go, do, do, do, do, do, and you don't pause to actually reflect, “Is this even what I want to do?” Or, “I don't want to pause, because I am going to have to face the fact that I'm not in alignment with my own values, and I'm not in authenticity. I don't want to go there, because that's a very difficult dark path to then unpack and unsee.”

Aaron Wilson: Yes. Personally, I know that all too well. As you're saying it, it's resonating with me. I'm just like, oh, my gosh. This is exactly where I'm at right now. By that, I mean, I really just have to question – it's like, you question everything, but in a sharper way.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Aaron Wilson: Especially when you want to live with your authentic self, showing up for yourself. It just feels flow. Like you were saying, flow for sure.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. One of the things that comes up, one of the first symptoms is actually, things that used to provide you joy and you used to look forward to now drain you and you're dreading. It's not the thing hasn't changed, but how you're functioning in it has changed. What else is causing that? What's the environment? What's the culture? What else is causing that, that's causing the shift?

Aaron Wilson: Yeah, 100%. That's the burnout. That's an important distinction, Cristina, in terms of just, what are those signs? That is the signal. If I look in retrospect, that happened, that major change points of my life. You just look at those moments and realize, “Okay, my cup is full. I can’t. I can't do it anymore.” You know that intuitively in your soul to a level as you’re saying.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I would say, yeah. We'll continue to unpack a lot more stuff in the book. But it was a first preview.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We'll continue next week with some more stuff, just give some more highlights in the book.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Aaron, for the questions.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Thank you, Aaron.

Aaron Wilson: Absolutely.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you’d like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. 

[END]