“What have we got here kids, a shotgun wedding?!”
That’s a great punchline… unless it’s not.
In season two, episode three of one of my all-time favorite shows, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, aspiring comedian Midge is a guest at her friend Mary's wedding. When, at the reception, Mary thanks her for helping pull the day together, Midge stands, lifts a glass, and starts a toast…which turns into a roast…which goes down in flames, as she inadvertently announces to the world that the bride is pregnant.
That kind of roast would have gotten belly laughs as part of her regular comedy set on Saturday nights at the club.
But the same woman, same edgy sense of humor, and same material in a church hall in front of a hundred relatives? Total disaster.
When reflecting later, Midge argued that she was just being herself. (Today she would have called it being “authentic.”) Nothing about Midge was inconsistent.
But that was exactly the problem.
Your Brand Is a Verdict, and You Are Not on the Jury
Ask most leaders to describe what they think their professional brand is and you get a list of aspirational adjectives.
Confident. Approachable. Reliable. Strategic.
But putting those words on a résumé or cover letter doesn’t make them true, any more than accepting an invitation to be on the cover of the proposed e-publication “Top 10 Executive Coaches in the Nation” – for the tiny price of $5,000 – would actually make me one of the Top 10, if there is even such a list beyond what Google or ChatGPT might come up with on a given day.
(And yes, that’s a common email/LinkedIn proposition many of us coaches have received.)
An evaluation you issue yourself is not an evaluation. It is a wish with good posture…and possibly a large budget. And a blindfold.
Every one of those words is a conclusion, and conclusions belong to the people forming them.
What you actually control is the evidence, e.g.:
- How you show up under pressure
- the quality of the work you produce and the team you build,
- how you give feedback and how you take it,
- whether you can translate your expertise into something relevant to whatever person is in front of you
- whether you engage diplomatically in conflict, attract it like a magnet, or avoid it at all costs.
- Whether you demonstrate the emotional intelligence to read the room and adapt accordingly.
Midge argued that her brand as a comic was hysterically funny. The other wedding attendees vehemently disagreed.
Their assessment of you is their subjective interpretation of your objective behavior in context. You supply the evidence. They render the verdict.
(Scroll down for a free checklist to help you discover where there might be gaps between your desired verdict and the evidence you provide.)
Why “Just Be Authentic” Leaves People Stuck
Here is where the advice usually goes wrong.
Nowadays, “authenticity” gets treated as sameness: show up identically everywhere, however you prefer, and if it does not land, that is the room's problem.
Midge was authentic. She was completely, gloriously herself. And she unintentionally humiliated two people she loved (and horrified the rest.)
Authenticity is not the antithesis of adaptability.
Authenticity lives in your intent and your values, not in the uniformity of your delivery.
Categorically refusing to adjust is not integrity, it’s rigidity. It is an unwillingness to do the work of being understood, and the cost of that gets paid by whoever is in the room with you.
The Context Check: Four Questions Before You Walk In
Before you decide how to show up, answer four questions.
- Who is the audience? How well do you know each other, and what is the nature of your relationship?
- What state are they in? A calm listener and an anxious or angry one need different things from you.
- What do I want them to think, feel and do? Identify the outcome you are there to produce, then plan accordingly.
- What is the context, and what is at stake? What risks are worth taking vs. avoiding?
Midge missed all four at once, which is why the scene is so spectacular.
One Quality, Three Rooms
Let’s take confidence, since it is the quality leaders request most.
- In front of a board, confidence may sound like a clear recommendation stated early, a short defense of the reasoning, and a direct answer when someone pushes. Hedging reads as unprepared.
- When disagreeing with a peer, confidence may sound like naming the disagreement plainly while leaving them room to move: I see it differently, and here is what I am weighing. Standing firm, board-room style, can project an unwillingness to listen.
- In front of your own team when they are scared about the future of the department, confidence is not feigning certainty and it is not whitewashed optimism. It is steadiness, transparency and empathy. Board-room crispness in that room lands as cold.
It’s the same intended verdict (“See me as confident.”), but requiring three genuinely different behaviors. Run the wrong one and you get filed as arrogant, or dismissive, or unsure, and nobody tells you.
What Actually Stays Constant
But if your brand is how people most consistently experience you, and every room calls for something different, isn’t that a contradiction?
No, it’s not.
What stays constant is the verdict you are aiming for.
What varies is the behavior required to produce it in that room, with those people, toward that outcome.
Consistency belongs at the level of intent, not necessarily delivery.
Mastering the integration of intent and delivery is what my clients work on in executive communication coaching and in team training.
Midge’s intent was always about wanting to make people laugh; nothing wrong with that!
And she was flawlessly consistent in her delivery, irrespective of context, but that inflexible consistency is exactly what produced a very undesirable and consequential verdict.
You cannot buy the verdict, and you cannot declare it. But you can get deliberate about the evidence, in every room, on purpose. That is the difference between authoring your brand and being a bystander to it.
Want to take the first step? Start by downloading my free “Leadership Communication Blind Spot Checklist” to identify where the way people experience you diverges from the leader you actually are inside, and to build the range to close it.
