Highly relevant thread, guide to spotting faking and deception online:

GOLD! - Guru Cults Exposed: The Tactics "Experts" Use To Pull You In & Suck You Dry

 

Perhaps the line can be drawn at two things. Where It Is Focused and What Would Happen If It Were Discovered.

Fake it till you make it advice tends to be given to those who have trouble believing in themselves. It’s directed more inwards then it is outwards.

And I think that’s one place we can draw the line.


Perhaps you get quite nervous when speaking with others. Well, then by all means, fake confidence. You are deceiving yourself that you are confident, that you can speak clearly and passionately.

And then, as you do so, you may find that you are beginning to gain that confidence. By faking it, you stopped yourself from hiding away and never doing it. You ‘faked it’, gained confidence, and then ‘made it’.

But faking it till you make it, when outwards focused, is not about deceiving yourself for your own benefit. It’s deceiving others for your benefit own benefit.

Okay: Knowing you can sing quite well, and telling yourself that you are ready to be on stage. Eventually, you will find that you are indeed ready. You are deceiving yourself to make yourself better.

Not Okay: Telling others you are a good singer, when you have never taken singing lessons or even so much as sang at church. You are deceiving them to make yourself seem better.

Another way to look at this could be, what happens if you were ‘found out’.

If you faked confidence at speaking engagements, well, what’s the big deal? People might even be MORE impressed.

Or if you hid that you were a one-man show with a few contractors? If you provided results, would your clients and customers be upset? If they would be, then faking it is probably not the right option. If they wouldn't care, so long as they got results, then perhaps it is okay to label yourself as whatever you need.

What about if you were a coach? And you said you could teach confidence and help people talk to the opposite sex. But you yourself clammed up and couldn’t utter two words to a guy/gal. And you were simply trying to fake that confidence until you earned it. Would your clients care about that?

They would.


But what if you were a coach that taught how to look at situations positively. And you suffered from depression? However, what you taught did work, because it often helped you. You were not 100% positive 100% of the time, but you were better than before. Would your clients learning that leave you? Or would it perhaps humanize you?

Are you deceiving others for your own gain? Or are you deceiving yourself to make yourself better?

What would others say if they found out?

My apologies for rambling. Like many things, this is a gray area. And I think it is a ‘know when I see it’ situation, which makes it almost impossible to directly pin down.

 

integrity is being loyal to our values

i value intelligence over stupidity


let's say we are sent to prehistoric times . we encounter stupid cave men

what is right here ? being loyal to our intelligence and ignoring the cave men ?
which is integrity

or putting us down to the level of the cave men in order to adapt to the prehstoric society ?

same thing in our society

there are stupid people and smart people

do stupid people deserve to have a better life than smart people ?


this is the core of your thread.

my answer is no

intelligence must win every time over stupidity and do what ever it takes

and i will be loyal to that decision

this is integrity by definition


.

 

IMHO there's two definitions of the phrase:

1. When you influence yourself to do positive things, even when you feel negative about them, and the only "life" on the line is yourself. This applies to confidence, appearance, behavior, self-talk, etc... Nobody else is "suckered" into your ruse. It's purely inward-facing even if there's an outward component to it (how people interact with you based on your confidence, for example).

2. When you deceive others in ways that affect them. This is when you pretend to have skills you don't, experiences you don't, talk about subjects you have no clue about, take on jobs you aren't qualified for, etc... it has potentially negative consequences for others. You are taking advantage of people's trust here.

The first is incredibly positive, and the hallmark of all self help.

The second is incredibly selfish, and not respectful to all the people you need to plow through to get to the "making it" part.

If you proclaim confidently that you'd love to try Mexican food when really you're very apprehensive about it - that's fine. If you proclaim confidently that you have skills that other people are trusting to be correct - that's not okay.

I'm sure I could phrase this better but that's the high level look at how I see that phrase - in terms of how much other people rely on your "faking" to be correct.

Worth noting that there are a million shades of grey in there and a million stories to be taken on case by case basis. Everyone needs to start "somewhere" at everything and really the question is how far you are willing to push the "faking it" part and what the fallout is on the folks you "fake it" with could be.

 

I have an extreme opinion on this topic. Personally, if I don’t have integrity, I have nothing.

Around the fourth grade I made going to the Air Force Academy my sole focus in life. As I learned more I made it my obligation to live by their cadet honor code, “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does” This was followed by the Air Force core values of “Integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do.”

I understand I sound like a tool, but these values have served me well.

In regards to the “Fake it ‘til you make it” discussion. I think the value in that truly lies within your own mind. That attitude has some power to make you take action on the things that the little voice in your head tells you that you can’t.

When applied externally, I think fake it until you make it can have disasterous results. In my 9-5 (really 0630-1500) it could mean an incompetent senior engineer signing off on an instruction that leads to a catostrophic failure of a helicopter and the death of tens of marines or sailors. All because some faker’s unfounded confidence moved them up through the ranks until they had a position with technical authority. Fortunately the system is good at preventing those situations.

More realistically, fake it until you make it may be something as trivial as filling out your About Us page with fictitious employees from Mr. Miller’s gym class. I didn’t really care for that portion in the Millionaire Fastlane, but MJ said it started as an inside joke and he questions the ethics of it.

I’m very hard on myself, but I have learned that everyone has different standards. I don’t think any less of MJ because of that example, I just wouldn’t personally want to use an approach like that. I prefer the “radical transparency” that Ray Dalio discusses in “Principles: Life and Work”

My opinion is that my life, and thus my business, should be founded on integrity. I don’t even like white lies, but I’ll admit I’m not perfect. If I pass someone in the aisle at the cubicle farm and they ask me “How’s it going?”, I’ll usually reply, “Good! How are you?”

I’m interested to see where this conversation goes.

 

I take 'fake it' as doing the things that matter, even if they don't give out results in the short term. AKA Desert of Desertion.

Fake it (fire action) until you make it (market echo)

The question should be 'How long must I fake it before I need to change my methods?'

The term 'fake it till you make it' has the misconception that the economical effort is one-directional or dimensional. It assumes that 'if I don't follow this only way, I'm doomed.' There are always other ways to turn to for better results.

This may be relevant to 'fail more to get success'.

While failing is a hard necessity, we will always find ways to avoid it. I found this blog write-up recently:
Why Silicon Valley's 'Fail Fast' Mantra Is Just Hype

It has a similar analogy to your engineer story, @JAJT.

It's not a white lie.

You just choose not to tell the whole story. And you have your right to confidentiality in this case.

For 'About Us' stories, I haven't seen much focus on mentioning team members these days. Or perhaps I am not shopping or researching hard enough!

 

Great Post REP+ I agree with this!

I personally believe in complete and radical honesty. Just be who you are, and if you don't have time to explain the complications therein, don't start the conversation.

I think the waters get muddy when some start equating this radical honesty with this "zero fucks given" stuff like they can wear hoodies, socks and sandals to meetings and cuss in front of customers. Not OK.

I wear suits to meetings, does that mean I am being dishonest because I wouldn't otherwise be wearing a suit in that moment? No of course not. I try to put my best foot forward in everything I do. You want to build legitimate, not fake, confidence in the people you are conducting business with.

If you look back to my old story about the letter of credit fraud case... My neck was on the line in that moment. I knew my Chinese supplier was going to attempt to run off with half of my customer's money. I could have shielded him from that and tried to patch the hole, but that is basically how every ponzi scheme in history starts. Instead I called him at 8AM in the morning and explained the situation. We still work together today and we both know we could trust each other with anything. I got him his money back, by the way.

Raising money: I have legitimately told people NOT to invest their money in my company before, I tell them every single problem I see with it... This has never netted me a negative result in my life. When they analyze every detail I lay out they ultimately want to invest anyway. It builds trust, it builds confidence and when these companies are doing 10x, 100x or even 1000x what they do today, the relationships will have a solid foundation of trust and I will have the support and respect of the people around me.

I don't build things on thin ice.

 

I see it like this. Are you:

1. Adopting new traits which you like and want to hold on to?
2. Trying to dress up your real self be pretending you're someone you aren't?

 

I think the heuristic would be something along the lines of: If you can be harmed or lose something by your actions, then it's ok to "fake it".

It becomes questionable to "fake it" when you can only benefit and have nothing to lose by your actions.

@Vigilante - you had your neck on the line in your story. I wouldn't say you were faking it for that very reason.

 

This reminds me of Phil Knights - "Blue ribbon and onitsuka story".

Honestly, I do business in an environment and industry where corruption is the order of the day and to find one honest person is ten times harder than finding raw gold.

Traits like sharpness, smartness and cunningness are often appreciated over integrity, that's why I appreciate this forum.

In my reality, I would say that opportunity sometimes comes and meets me unprepared and not ready, but I never turn it down, if I can't perform it then I find someone who can and partner with them. Because such opportunities are rare, I try to be honest but I know my environment and I'm careful with how I disclose information, business is more war like where I come from and being an open "goody too shoe" book will always hurt.

So I've learnt to have integrity but also be smart about how I conduct myself, this hasn't always worked for me, but it's a learning process.

 

Pretending to be bigger than you are is to me where the phrase comes from. It is also how every single company operates in the beginning.

There normally comes a point, like in @Vigilante 's story where your company has a choice to make..... raise your hand and admit you can't handle it (and potentially lose that customer) or roll the dice (and potentially lose it all).

In our company, we have several spots where we 'got too big, too fast' and ended up losing several clients and several good staff because of it. Now we are very clear with clients when we cannot do something. When we start with a potentially large client, we are very clear on the front end that we do NOT want all their business. Not at first. We want to ramp up so we don't let them down. Most are amicable with that.

Knowing I that had a point in our past where I should have stepped in and said 'no, we are not ready to handle that for you yet' .... @Vigilante if you went back in time, would you have stepped in and stopped the snowball and potentially lost Walmart to save the company or would you still have rolled the dice?

 

Go big or go home.

 

If you value intelligence so much, why does your grammar and punctuation suck so badly?

 

My knee jerk, moral reaction, is that a lie is a lie. Faking it is a lie directed at misinforming another person. My personal policy is that I don't knowing nor intentionally lie, cheap or steal.

An untruth, a lie, takes many forms and I really had to think past my initial reaction.

Upon reflecting a bit more, I thought about the fact that if you act the part of the person you want to become, those actions are the path to fulfill that transition. You must see yourself being that person, before you can become that vision.

Don't we fake it just about everyday in order to fit into our little worlds? Whether it takes the form of trying to act like we're more than we are to impress others, or down play our personal situation in order to fit in. Isn't that a mild form of faking it?

Is being nice when you don't feel like it, or politically correct when that position violates your core beliefs, another form if faking it?

You're right. Where do we draw the line? It's not a black and white issue -- lots of gray areas.

 

My side gig is a website that I run alone. I’ve hired some writers in the past, but otherwise it is just me. However, I don’t want the site to be a personal brand. This could be helping or hurting the business. Who knows, but that isn’t the point of this post.

When I write on the site I will often use the word “we” instead of “I”. It is kind of the Royal We. No fake photos of other employees or anything like that.

This is my white lie. This is me “faking it”. It still bugs me when I do it so I avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately, making the brand a personal brand (I) bugs me so much more.

I feel mostly ok with it because I’m not selling the company to be something huge. I’m not trying to change opinions or fool people into thinking the website is something it isn’t. The about page says that I made it, but even that makes me cringe. I just don’t want to be the face of the site (for better or worse). I’m simply not Pat Flynn or Gary V.

I know this is very small compared to the other examples, but this is my little ethical dilemma I sometimes think about and is in line with the photo example MJ references.

*end confession*