Authenticity Isn't Enough

What if authenticity isn’t enough?

In this episode of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams talks with actor, writer, leadership consultant, and Play You: The Role of a Lifetime author Pam Sherman about identity, leadership, personal narrative, and the gap between who we believe we are and how other people actually experience us.

Pam calls this the believability gap: the distance between who we fundamentally think we are, who we believe we’re supposed to be, and how we actually show up for others. For Pam, self-awareness matters, but so do listening, relationship, and impact.

We talk about the inherited story that led Pam away from her childhood dream of acting and into law, what happened when that identity stopped fitting, and how returning to acting changed not only her career but the way she understood herself.

We also explore what it actually takes to change a story. Pam works with people to imagine and write different narratives for themselves, but she argues that insight alone is not enough. The change becomes real through practice, repetition, and behaving differently when the old story returns.

And then Pam challenges one of our culture’s favorite ideas: authenticity. Her argument is that authenticity can become “this is who I am” without enough attention to empathy, listening, or the experience we create for other people.

That raises a question I’ll continue exploring throughout the Narrative Intelligence Project: Does Narrative Intelligence require Emotional Intelligence? Pam thinks the two are deeply connected. I’m not sure yet—and that is exactly the kind of question these 100 conversations are designed to test.

Pam leaves us with a beautifully practical way to think about all of this: she isn’t interested in the story people will tell at her funeral. She wants to know the story they could tell tomorrow about how she showed up today.

More about Pam Sherman and her book, Play You: The Role of a Lifetime:

https://www.thepamsherman.com/my-story

More about Paige Williams:

https://paigewilliams.co/

StoryKeys:

https://storykeys.co/

The 100 Stories Project:

https://100storiesproject.com/