This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Authenticity versus emotional labor
Emotional labor is the work of doing what we don’t feel like doing. It’s
about showing up with a smile when we’re wincing inside, or resisting the
urge to chew someone out because you know that engaging with him will
make a bigger difference.
It takes a small amount of energy and guts to be authentic. You need to
feel confident enough to let your true feelings be exposed, knowing that if
you’re rejected, it’s personal.
But there’s a lot of hiding involved as well—hiding from the important
work of making change happen. If all you do is follow your (make-believe)
muse, you may discover that the muse is a chicken, and it’s steering you
away from the important work. And if the authentic you is a selfish jerk,
please leave him at home.
If you need to be authentic to do your best work, you’re not a
professional, you’re a fortunate amateur. Fortunate, because you have a gig
where being the person you feel like being in the moment actually helps
you move forward.
For the rest of us, there’s the opportunity to be a professional, to exert
emotional labor in search of empathy—the empathy to imagine what
someone else would want, what they might believe, what story would
resonate with them.

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We don’t do this work because we feel like it in the moment. We do this
work, this draining emotional labor, because we’re professionals, and
because we want to make change happen.
Emotional labor is the work we do to provide service.
Who’s talking?
When you get an email from a faceless corporation, speaking in the second
person, someone is hiding. It’s slick, but it’s not real. We don’t feel a
connection, merely the shadow of a bureaucrat.
On the other hand, when a human being extends emotional labor to take
responsibility—“Here, I made this”—then the door is open to connection
and growth.
The most effective organizations don’t always have a famous leader or a
signature on every email. But they act like they do.
“Here, I made this.”
The goal isn’t to personalize the work. It’s to make it personal.

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