"We have to dare to be ourselves, no matter how frightening or strange that self may prove to be" -- Mary Sarton
In a previous article (see The Focused Leader) we talked about developing a powerful and inspiring focus. Let's assume that you now have such a focus, and even though it may not exactly meet all the criteria covered earlier, you still feel strongly enough about it to move forward. Congratulations!
With the rollout of your focus, your integrity is now on the line. There is no turning back. In your darkest moments you will sometimes admit to yourself that you must be crazy, including those times when even your staunchest backers will seem to be doubting your sanity. This is when you must draw upon your greatest asset – yourself. To do that you must know yourself – intimately. No ‘mirror, mirror on the wall’ here. No ego trips. Know your strengths and your limitations. If you cannot be open and candid with yourself, it will show through with others and you run the risk of being perceived as inauthentic, even a fake.
So what is authenticity? Well, it’s not about bashing yourself up. It’s about understanding enough about yourself to be able to step forward with confidence and say things like:
“I know what I’m good at and what I’m not so good at. I will build on my strengths and shore up my weaknesses.
I will surround myself with people who are good, really good at what I neither have the time for or the ability to do myself. I will build a truly diversified team who can get the job done, who can achieve the focus.
When I mess up I will ‘fess up. I will forgive myself and move on. I will do the same with other committed team players. I recognize that when I trip up and fall, it’s because I am moving, and that without movement there can be no progress.
I will be myself at all times. I will not wear a mask”
The Leader’s Inner Journey
In his best selling book Synchronicity – The Inner Path of Leadership, author and leader Joseph Jaworski describes his personal journey from being a highly successful, top notch attorney, through a period of inner reflection, doubt and confusion, to ultimately a discovery of his real self and his true focus, which is creating leaders at all levels in the community, something he was not trained for in his twenty years as an attorney. It’s a story of remarkable courage and personal change, but above all it’s a story of someone in a search to discover his authentic self.
During his journey he encountered many facets of himself that were not very attractive…he faced many monsters and overcame them. He also managed somehow to attract to his BIG idea some of the greatest experts on leadership, who created a curriculum for The American Leadership Forum, a non-governmental agency he founded, with the purpose of developing collaborative leadership to deal with urban and regional problems in the United States.
The Forum has based its work on eight propositions concerning leadership. The very first proposition is stated as ‘The trouble with American leaders is their lack of self-knowledge’ which reflects Jaworski’s own journey.
So how can you achieve greater self-knowledge?
One of the greatest capabilities we possess as humans is our ability to deceive ourselves. We learn this very early in life as we compete for our parents’ attention, and the attention of other adults in our lives, who hold tremendous power over us. We learn that to show signs of weakness in the presence of people with power might be a very unwise move. We form the perception that powerful people admire and support other powerful people, and therefore we try to become one, or at least form an image of ourselves as powerful. We do this in school, on the sports field, in extra curricular activities, in our hobbies, at home and at work. We tend to pay less attention to our weaknesses and more to our strengths. Some people even grow up with ‘imposter’ personalities…they continually try to show an image to the outside world of someone who is always in control, confident and powerful. On the inside however they may have serious feelings of weakness and insecurity.
Although there are many self-help ‘tools’ available for discovering our true selves, most people being exposed to one type or another during their careers (“I’m an ENFJ”), the real journey towards self-discovery goes far beyond paper and pencil tests that hope to reveal feelings and perceptions about our self, or others’ perceptions of us, our personality or our ‘style’. The journey is an inner one, a very personal and very lonely journey.
Many leaders never take this journey to authenticity. Not knowing their authentic self, warts and all, they launch into an empowerment program, with the express aim of creating ‘empowered leaders at every level in our organization’. The only problem is that the newly empowered people are minted in the image and likeness of their leader, insecurities and all. The result is an imperfect attempt at cloning other people as leaders, who end up continually looking over their shoulders and wondering ‘how the boss might do it’. You have to let people be the authors of their own work. If there is no authorship, there will be just failed attempts at plagiarism.
If you want to get the most authentic effort from people, let them truly be the authors and designers, without interference from you. Allow them to be their authentic selves, not a fake you. To do this, you need to lead by example by being authentic yourself.
Being authentic means letting go
One leader I worked with, when asked by a group of his followers for his input on a proposed process improvement replied: ‘My ideas on this are all flawed, but my ego is encouraging me to interfere nonetheless. So I’ll park my ego, and zip my lip. You guys have this cornered…I trust your wisdom and judgment and I won’t second-guess you’.
This came from a leader who had a reputation for interfering and second-guessing. The result was astonishing. The team working on the process improvement stopped looking over their collective shoulders, released their creativity and produced a process improvement that was nothing short of astounding. In truth, this leader had been going through a personal transformation for some time, and the group had recognized it. In fact the leader would openly discuss his attempts at self-discovery and authenticity during weekly management meetings. The event was a watershed for the leader and the group, one that they talked about for some time after. The group was not about to let their newfound authorship slip out of their grasp!
When you establish your focus, how much authorship are you going to allow your team in putting the pieces in place to achieve it? When we truly author something we take ownership. We feel responsible. We feel proud of our effort and accomplishment. Our minds are engaged, our hands are kept busy, our hearts are aroused and our spirit is revived. When this happens there is no need for such things as ‘accountability contracts’, ‘360 feedback’ or other instruments of control that masquerade as exercises in human resource development. Development simply happens naturally when you let go.
Being authentic has a synergistic effect
The renowned quality guru J. M. Juran defined management as the practice of controlling and improving things. The sad fact of the matter is that many leaders have made the mistake of trying to apply that to people. If you want to manage a person, try ‘managing’ yourself. When you see how difficult that is, imagine the outcome when you try to control and improve someone else.
Lead people…manage things
Where people are concerned, if there is anything to manage, it is the relationship between you and them. Focus on that. Set goals for that. Control what YOU do in the relationship. Improve the relationship. Nothing else will work. Try to ‘manage’ a person and you will achieve one of three outcomes. They will either revolt, comply or just plain ignore you. Mediocre performance will be the result, and you will be left wondering why people ‘resist change’, when the truth of the matter is that people don’t resist change so much as they resist being changed.
So if switching the emphasis from managing people to managing relationships is key, what has authenticity got to do with it? The bottom line on this is that people generally seek to develop relationships with other people whom they feel they can trust, and the whole basis for trust is authenticity. You wouldn’t want to develop a relationship with someone you thought of as being a fake, would you?
Think of this as a reinforcing loop. More authenticity leads to a higher degree of mutual trust, which empowers relationships and fuels the desire to take risks and be the author of something BIG, (“I might fail, but that’s okay because there’s a lot of forgiveness in this relationship”). This produces more personal and organizational successes, which in turn reinforces authenticity.
Authenticity therefore is the basis for sustained success, and it starts with being true to yourself...removing the mask. When you do so, amazing things can happen.
About Brian Ward
Brian Ward is a Principal in Affinity Consulting, an Edmonton Alberta based consulting practice. He is the author of Lead People...Manage Things. He has over 25 years of experience working with all levels of leaders and teams as a leadership coach, facilitator and consultant. His website is at www.affinitymc.com
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