Provides an approach to improving presentation skills. Presentation skills are typically poor among most people, and few people, if any, are natural presenters. One phrase really stood out - "those who fake it will never make it." I agree with the author's core premise that you have to be authentic - you have to be real and you have to care. Many people are just pretending throughout the day, or acting in ways they thing others expect. Author does a good job in explaining the apparent dichotomy between being authentic, while at the same recognizing and adjusting to your audience. The only thing I didn't like as much was the use of the characters (Josh, Rachel, etc.) to illustrate the author's points. It's just not my preferred way to learn, but I expect most of the readers will like it. A lot of writers can't execute this well - it comes off as fake or contrived; I think the author did pretty well. The questions at the end of each chapter are good. It's a good way to get the reader to reflect on the chapter. A key audience for this book are people in college, or even in high school, and on the cusp of entering the full-time work environment. Although even more experienced people will not have figured out a lot of this, so it should have a broad audience.

One of the first rules of The Authenticity Code is to know your audience. I am not the audience for this book. I am a former Toastmaster and proficient speaker. That being said I do think that there is some good in this book for a new, young, or unassertive speaker. It’s something that maybe I would give to a class of college or high school Freshmen to help them learn the basic skill of presenting, something that as much as we as a culture hate doing, is often necessary. The book is written as a version of Dr. Lamm-Hartman’s work The Authenticity Code but also as a way to sell it.

It’s written as a parable about two office workers presenting presentations for a job promotion but is written in such a way that the workers come across more like petulant children and not people who are even remotely capable to take on this job promotion. It’s clunky at best. The story goes on and the workers fail miserably in their first presentation and because apparently, this company has loads of time to waste the boss takes the time to teach them both this method.

While I really love the concepts I do genuinely think they would be better passed along as a guidebook and not a parable, with exercise and examples. Then again, this book isn’t written for me.

4/10

The irony of the premise is mindboggling - "it is important to be authentic. Let me teach you how to be authentic" - that false framing spelt doom for this book. If it had been couched as a book to help think through strategies for effective presentations (sale-sy or not), the author would have come across with more credibility. Examples that sound made-up and trumped-up are scattered throughout the book; overall, some few pointers on presentation skills - but nothing structured, no real thought framework, and certainly nothing to do with any code for authenticity.

The Authenticity Code is a book intent on leading people to discover the best way to present themselves in personal and professional contexts. I usually really like business books written in novel or parable format because it makes the context easier to understand and grasp. In this book, however, it read like an infomercial. The author used every opportunity to attach their corporate tag lines to the messaging (“The Authenticity Code: Your Presence + Your Audience + Your Presentation = Your Success”). It felt like the key concept coming from this book was “take the Authentic Presence and Presentation Skills course.”

Aside from the writing style, I struggled with the idea of the “authenticity code” that felt incredibly inauthentic. I agree wholeheartedly that knowing your audience and changing your presentation style based on that knowledge is a key to successful presentations. I just think of that as strategy and not as an authentic interaction. Overall, this book wasn’t all I had hoped it would be.