“Does anyone have any questions?” asked the boss to 500 colleagues at an important retail conference.
What happened next was that tumbleweed moment that inevitably follows such a poorly thought through request for interactivity. You know the one, when everybody suddenly looks down and gets very interested in their shoes, or if they are more outgoing, someone else’s shoes.
Eventually, a quiet voice towards the back squeaked. “I do,” it said. Those two words were met by a collective exhalation of relief – the embarrassing silence filled.
Bill, not his real name, a store manager attending the event, proceeded to ask his question – his volume and confidence building as his white knuckled grip on the microphone eased. As he finished, everyone looked expectantly from Bill back to the boss.
“That’s a ridiculous question Bill,” blustered the boss. “Does anyone have a decent one?”
More shoe staring, silence and stillness followed and, funnily enough, nobody asked anything else – that day or for a long time thereafter.
Was Bill’s question stupid? Maybe.
Was the boss’ question doomed to fail? Absolutely. That ‘any questions’ technique rarely leads to meaningful dialogue. And was he right to respond as he did? Wasn’t he, after all, just saying exactly what he thought? Wasn’t he just being his authentic self and isn’t that what leaders need to be?
There’s just one problem; authenticity can’t be an excuse to say whatever we want, to whomever we want, in the spur of the moment. Without the right intent, integrity and honesty, this type of ‘authenticity’ breaks, rather than builds, trust – the keystone to building engaged teams, better performance and higher profits.
The boss in this scenario said exactly what he thought, but in so doing broke the trust of his people – and trust is the ultimate currency of leadership.
This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer shows 6 in 10 of us distrust something until we’ve seen evidence that it’s trustworthy. According to Edelman, that’s bad news because it means we’re living in an era where distrust is the default. The good news is that businesses (their leaders, co-workers and communications) are most trusted – more so than government, media and even NGOs.¹
Leadership authenticity, driven by the right intent, is an antidote to distrust, but to succeed it needs us to be authentically honest with ourselves. And that starts with self-awareness.
We need to know ourselves, our beliefs, our values and the principles that guide our leadership, so it remains consistent – especially when we’re under stress. We already know how to play to our strengths because they have led us into leadership, but we also need to understand what limits us, for example if we’re overplaying our strengths to the point of weakness, as Bill’s boss and his poorly aimed directness illustrated.
A multi-year study into self-awareness by organisational psychologist, Dr Tasha Eurich, found: “95% of people think they’re self-aware, but the real number is closer to 10%-15%.”² This matters because our leadership impacts the wellbeing and performance of others. It means we must seek feedback about ourselves and become astute enough to recognise the cues that those we lead are sending.
As a safety mechanism, humans have become very adept at detecting inauthenticity – we disengage from those we distrust. And disengagement at work remains stubbornly high.
When asked to respond to this year’s global Gallup survey, 19% of employees claimed to be ‘actively disengaged’ – that’s a fifth of the people on your payroll! An additional 60% weren’t particularly engaged either.³ Imagine the possibilities were leaders able to actively engage more than the remaining 21% of their workforce.
There are many reasons people disengage, but with more than 25 years’ experience working with leaders to help them better engage their people, what Axiom knows is that lack of leadership, capability and authenticity are certainly high among them. And, of course, we know many ways to drive up meaningful dialogue – be it during one-to-ones or at live events for thousands of participants.
“My preferences are different to yours, so if I’m an enlightened leader why would I think my peers, my team, or my stakeholders need what I need, or all need the same? They don’t. When leaders only play to their own style and strengths it’s a limitation. Rather they need an authentic but adaptable style that meets the needs of others,” explains Miles Henson, who leads on Axiom’s leadership development programme the ‘Straight A’s Approach to Interpersonal Excellence‘. Getting straight A’s… in Awareness of self, Astuteness in reading the needs of others and Agility in meeting those needs… has proven valuable to industry leaders the world over for decades now.
So how do we become more appropriately authentic? It’s not with an unpredictable ‘shoot from the lip’ approach but, contrary to popular belief, it’s not with an inflexible ‘true to self’ one either. What’s needed is an authentic approach that’s more flexible, more adaptive, more likely to achieve win / win outcomes, because it is driven by the right intent.
It’s this chameleon-like agility, being able to respond authentically to different people and situations, that are the hallmarks of effective leadership. The chameleon astutely detects changes in its environment, adapting its colour accordingly, yet we’re never left in any doubt that it’s a chameleon.
So while this “authentically adaptive” chameleon-like approach may not feel comfortable initially, research from Professor Herminia Ibarra shows that leaders who adopt it “arrive much faster at an authentic but more skilful style than true to selfers.”⁴
Good leaders adapt, not on a whim but intentionally. They can do so because they know themselves, are honest about what matters to them and consistently show up in ways that bring out the best in those they lead. Without that, no matter how authentic we feel, others find us inauthentic. And inauthenticity disengages and makes leadership ineffective.
The Straight A’s approach is part of Axiom’s leadership development portfolio, which gives leaders the practical skills they need to become authentically adaptive and able to engage all their stakeholders in these fast-changing times. You can find out more about Straight A’s in our new short film presented by Miles Henson here.
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References
¹ The Edelman Trust Barometer 2022: The Cycle of Distrust.
² TED Talk by Dr Tasha Eurich, Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix, TEDxMileHigh November 2017.
³ The State of the Global Workplace 2022, GALLUP.
⁴ The Authenticity Paradox, Herminia Ibarra, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2015
