Keeping it Real: The Importance of Honesty and Authenticity as a Leader

We are tired of bosses and managers who are fake, plastic, disingenuous, and only believe in protecting their own self-interest.

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For a leader—is honesty and authenticity important?  I think it is critically important. Why?

As I often jokingly say when I speak to audiences, every single person on the planet is born with a very sophisticated device.  This device is often covered in anatomy class at school, but we somehow missed the lesson.  This very small but sophisticated and sensitive device is located about one inch below the surface of your skin located right around your solar plexus.  What is this amazing technological device?  I call it a B.S. alarm.  It is the alarm that goes off when someone is “blowing smoke” in your general direction. In the workplace we are tired of bosses and managers who are fake, plastic, disingenuous, and only believe in protecting their own self-interest.

Let me provide you with a few real-life examples, with the names changed to protect the innocent.  I once worked for an organization where the person who I reported to was a very disingenuous person.  On the surface, when you first met Zack, he appeared to be a very nice and friendly person.  However, after working with him for some time, I realized that he was more interested in serving his own needs and not mine.  The first time I realized this was when I had an article published in an industry journal.  I excitedly went to his office to show him the article.  His response was lukewarm at best, and every fiber of my being said that he was actually jealous of my accomplishments because he did not get published in this journal first.  In other words, I had beaten him to the punch and I discovered that he was a very insecure individual. We had a leader who said that he cared but the reality was he only cared when it served his own specific self-interest.

How do you as a leader insure that you’re being real honest and authentic?  Here are 5 areas that you might want to truly consider in developing a foundation for this particular thought process:

1. Know Who You Are: what does that mean? What it means is that you have a specific and unique personality and style. The reality is that there are certain core principles that you have. These are core principles that you cannot and should not abandon. Your belief about how things should be run is often based on your personal value system.  Unfortunately, when some people move to another company or a new culture, they feel like they cannot be who they are, or they will not fit in with the specific culture of their organization.  If you feel like you have to be different than the person that you are in order to fit in with your organization as a leader, then I would strongly urge you to consider working somewhere else.

2. Take Some Assessments: as mentioned in an earlier chapter, one way of learning more about who you are is to take some specific assessments which are available online or on paper.  There are leadership assessments, behavioral style assessments (like DISC, The Platinum Rule, MBTI, and so on) listening assessments, and communication style assessments, just to name a few.  Each time you take a specific assessment, you learn more about yourself as a person and as a leader. These specific assessments give you objective feedback about your strengths and your weaknesses, as well as areas for improvement. The bottom line is that assessments help you gain a better understanding of who you are.  I also suggest that you share the results of your various assessments with significant others in your life to help them validate the results for you.  The discussions that you share with people in your personal life about these assessments can also deepen your understanding of the assessment results. The more knowledge you gain about yourself, the better off you will be. It will also make you a more effective leader.

3. Note Your Strengths: if you asked ten people you know if they could list your specific professional strengths, what would they say? The second question is, will their answers be the same as your answers?  It certainly is an interesting question.  The idea of understanding your strengths is that you can be very open and honest about them.

4. Make A Commitment To The Truth: I believe that people in a leadership position should be committed to telling the truth 100% of the time. As a person in a leadership role, telling somebody something that is not true is doing them a grave disservice.  Why?  Because they trust that you are being honest and they will then leave that conversation believing something that is false.  Let me give you an example.  Let’s say one of your team members gets up in front of a group and gives a presentation.  As you are observing the presentation, it gradually dawns on you that they are doing a truly awful job.  After the presentation is over, and everyone has left, you say to the person, “Wow, Cindy, that was a really good presentation, and I appreciate all your hard work.”  Cindy then leaves the room assuming that you told her the truth, and the reality is that you didn’t. You didn’t have the courage to tell the truth. What you should have said instead was, “I really appreciate the hard work you put into the presentation, but I don’t feel today that we really got the results that we were looking for.”  You then can have a conversation about what went well and what could be improved.  This conversation would actually be truthful and would help the employee grow and develop their presentation skills. You can tell people the truth and still be diplomatic and careful and in the way you position it, in a way that is not offensive.  They may not enjoy hearing the news, but they will respect you for being honest at least.

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