The Chameleon
Showing up as you think you should be is not the same as showing up as you are.

I was once compared to a chameleon, as I have figured out how to be successful in a variety of environments — work, social, and family — by taking on the persona of how one should show up in those settings. I don’t think it was meant as a compliment.
When I started in Dr. Jenn McCabe’s leadership course, the standing accusation for me from my peers was that I was showing up as Commander Dave, rather than Dave. Or I’d perform the role of husband Dave, brother Dave, or son Dave — but still not Dave. I didn’t like the accusation. Didn’t really get it. I’d end the day-long sessions absolutely spent from trying to avoid the real me, who I didn’t really know, while carrying myself as the guy I wanted people to see.
Now, two years later, I find class sessions to be energizing, with a lightness that accompanies deep interactions. I’ve also realized that I have stopped second guessing decisions and no longer replay conversations in my head to critique what I should have or could have said differently. Such relief!
Within the four communication skills that are the foundation of the Person Centered Approach (PCA) to leadership, there is a skill called congruence. Congruence is used to manifest your will — what’s going on inside you — when it serves you. We’re talking feelings here, not intellectual thoughts. Properly executed, congruence requires awareness of what you’re experiencing in the here and now and alignment of your words and body language as you bring them forward.
Our culture lets us get away with faking it, getting close enough, and then disregarding those subtle facial gestures or body language cues that betray a disconnect between what is being said and what’s really felt about the topic. A skilled listener can spot the signs quickly, but we encounter few people in daily life who are skilled in this way. We get away with being incongruent, in part because everyone is playing their own roles and following the standards or scripts society prefers. The senior and subordinate play off of each other, husband and wife, mother and son, and on and on. But sometimes the stakes are high, or the roles are in conflict, and the charade breaks down. “I don’t believe you” moves from the background to the foreground, and the tap dancing to figure out what you want begins. It’s exhausting.
When I first learned about congruence, it sounded easy. Just say what’s on your mind and apply body language that matches. But executing the skill didn’t seem to do much for me. Tense interactions remained tense, and saying what was on my mind often created distance in the conversation or escalated the argument.
Take off the mask
The problem was that in considering what I would say, I started with what I should say. I was playing a role. Instead of asserting what I wanted or what was really on my mind, I was taking cues from an external standard I had adopted. The words I was bringing forward were often the formulation of intellect, rather than a true reflection of what I felt. How would a good officer carry himself? What would a good husband say? What would a good son do? The thing about the word should is that as soon as it appears, it signals a disconnect in congruence. Generally speaking, should means I have a no but am obligating myself to go along anyway.
I was suppressing my true self because I judged that self to be unbecoming of the person I was striving to be. A breakthrough moment for me came when I watched another student work through a role play where a company president engages with an employee who sent a letter detailing several concerns with the way the organization was being run. The student remarked after one attempt that she was holding back what she really wanted to say because she didn’t feel it was presidential. On the subsequent run, she took off the president’s mask and carried out the exchange by stating what she was feeling — “I feel I’m being tested right now” — as she experienced it. The tension in the room vanished, and I thought “I didn’t know you could do that!”
That simple statement demonstrated three things: that the pretense of role was set aside, it showed an awareness of what was going on inside, and announced a willingness to be vulnerable. Awareness and willingness go hand in hand, but are two distinct decisions. Both are required in order to successfully use congruence.
Awareness
Becoming aware of what’s going on inside is both instantaneous and iterative. We can quickly sense tension, getting flush in the face, that inconvenient twitch, or lack of blinking (my signature move!), as well as emotions such as joy, pain, fear, and anger. Others will often see it before we feel it. But putting words to those physical tells is a different story.
The emotion could come up as a direct response to something the other said, or it could come up as you consider what to do next, in looking at what you want and don’t want. A clean want is a decision you don’t feel compelled to justify, one that comes without emotional luggage. Clean wants are rare, especially early on in the process.
We are creatures of narrative. We have stories to go along with our past, present, and future. And most of the time those monologues take time to develop. With narrative comes self-deception, which as you may guess, is tough to spot on your own. The best way to unwind self-deception is to get in front of someone skilled and walk through your experience. But if all you have is something going on inside and a partial story to accompany it, you can still make progress by bringing it out to whoever you are with. Even if unpleasant in the moment.
In my case, I had been wearing the masks of my roles for so long that when I decided to set aside what I should want, I often couldn’t answer the question of what I really wanted. But slowly I learned to recognize what I was feeling, which gave me some clues as to where I was. One of the most useful was a tension I would feel in my chest, which indicated I was dependent on someone or something else in deciding what I wanted. This would then lead in one of two directions. Either I was obligating myself to want something I should want (because the good officer, husband, son would want those things), or I was clean in what I wanted (which happened more frequently as I got used to separating me from my role) but did not want to take responsibility for it and declare the thought to another person, especially one I cared about.
Bring it out
Willingness to speak up and own what one wants involves being vulnerable. It comes with a willingness to be wrong, or unpolished, and may result in having to stand in the face of discomfort.
I have often held back from going after what I wanted or from manifesting my feelings out of uncertainty about whether the other (or I) would be able to handle what I had to say and what might come next. This is another way of saying I have held back out of contempt for the other or for self.
The other person may indeed choose to feel hurt by what was said, and they will handle that emotion in their own way and in their own time. But they will also see the congruence and know what they are seeing is real and authentic, just as they will see the misalignment if they are told what I think they want to hear.
There is a cost to holding back from stating what is really wanted or truly being experienced. On one level, it may result in an opportunity lost for getting what you want (or getting out of what you don’t want). More importantly, though, is that the true self does not go away, and the desires that have not been given a voice will come up again and again until they are acted upon. The will is in charge.
As I think back to the beginning of this journey, it seemed at the time that the obstacles to achieving congruence were formidable. Yet in the months that have passed since, it seems those decisions were actually quite simple — it wasn’t about being able… it was about being willing! Congruence for me has resulted in getting more of what I want and less of what I don’t. It has delivered a greater level of understanding of others and a higher frequency of being understood. And in relationships with friends, I’m finding far richer conversations than those that used to contain only surface level chatter.
— Dave
David Burke is a student in Dr. Jenn McCabe’s 4-Year Leadership Program. This essay is the fifth in his ‘Pathways of Leadership’ series documenting the journey. The others can be found here, here, here, and here.
