There’s a scene that happened early in my career that I still remember decades later. I was going about my business as usual when I suddenly heard a loud noise that made me look over my cubicle. I looked over the cubicle and saw the team leader of another development team in the next cubicle yelling furiously into his cell phone. I realized that he was on the phone with sales and that the development team was taking on unnecessary work because of sales’ greed or mistakes.

The reason this scene sticks out in my mind is because I got the impression that the team leader was a bit over the top with his complaints. I don’t remember all of the details, but rather than being an outrageous incident, the issue with the sales team was something that could have been handled with a little more communication. In other words, the development team could be frustrated, but not to the point of screaming on the phone in the middle of the office.

As a new employee at the time, I thought the team leader handled the situation in an inappropriate way. No matter how frustrated I was, I questioned whether it was appropriate to be so openly and emotionally conflicted with a team of partners I would be working with in the future.

But in hindsight, I wonder if it was all intentional. For one thing, the team leader’s character wasn’t the type of person to act emotionally easily, and the location of the call was in the middle of the office where everyone could hear. Perhaps to prevent the team members from becoming frustrated with the excessive workload, the team leader himself would have taken a strong stand and sent the message “I’m on your side”. This could have been a strategic move to strengthen team cohesion and reduce the amount of stress they were feeling.

He’s also trying to gain leverage in future relationships with the sales team. He’s clearly pointing out their mistake and the damage it caused, with a warning that he won’t sacrifice his team for sales team’s performance in the future.

The reason this scene came back to me now is because I read something similar in Erving Goffman’s book . In this book, he argues that we all engage in some form of “self-presentation” in our social lives, and that the primary purpose of these presentation is to influence others’ definition of the situation.

Self-presentation itself is an inevitable part of social interactions. In our daily lives, we play different social roles. At work, we play the role of a teammate, at home, we play the role of a spouse and parent, and in our relationships with friends, we play different versions of ourselves. In order to fit the role required in each situation, we have to adjust our behavior and project an image that matches the role. This is because social expectations have already been formed in that way.

In addition, these self-presentation can also act as a gateway to social relationships. Not all relationships form spontaneously, and often the initial stages of a relationship are kick-started by presenting yourself in a positive light. Many relationships wouldn’t even get off the ground if it weren’t for some sort of self-presentation to emphasize one’s strengths and hide one’s weaknesses.

As a result, Self-presentation isn’t just a way to deceive others, it’s more of a strategy that we have to learn in order to conform to social norms/expectations and build relationships.

However, it’s a little uncomfortable to write about it so openly. This is because we expect authenticity from each other, which means that we expect others to reflect their true selves. Self-presentation inevitably involves artifice, and when it’s revealed that it’s a presentation, it can give people the impression of being ‘fake’. Especially in Eastern cultures, this can lead to the perception that you are not what you appear to be, which can significantly reduce trust in you.

This is where the complexities and contradictions of human society come into play. Authenticity is something that you and I both value socially, but in practice, being authentic in all situations, without presentation, can have negative consequences. People expect and demand authenticity, but they don’t want it to disrupt social harmony and create unnecessary conflict. Therefore, personal authenticity and social norms will inevitably clash, and at some point, authenticity will have to be abandoned in favor of a staged mask.