Be an authentic leader? Sure, but what if you are authentically an ars*hole?

As Polonius has it in Hamlet “To thine own self be true.” Authenticity is sometimes viewed as the holy grail of leadership. The idea is often framed thus: there is no single model of successful leadership (which must be true) so the critical thing is to know yourself and your preferences sufficiently — to find your authentic voice — and make a virtue of it when it comes to leading people. People tend to rate those leaders who are genuine and are suspicious of those who are exhibiting ‘learned behaviour’. Like a top dancer or athlete, a performance imbued with apparent effortlessness is rated more highly, whereas that which appears full of struggle has a gracelessness to it that fails to inspire.

It all starts with self-reflection. If you want to be authentically yourself, you need to really understand who you are — what makes you tick? how do you best work? what are your motivations, desires, and flaws? As John Ameachi puts it on page 1 of his excellent new book The Promises of Giants:

“… knowing yourself intimately and objectively is a vital first step towards realizing your potential as a person and a leader.”

Or as he later describes his mother asking him a question on the same theme:

“Would you know your soul in the dark?”

This notion has crept into countless leadership programmes and is often used as a coaching or mentoring tool. I don’t plan on going into detail about what processes are used in these circumstances (take it as read that some are genuinely searching and excellent, whilst others are so much pap), but what happens if, at the end of a truly challenging process of understanding, you come to the realisation that you are — not to put too fine a point on it — an arsehole?

Whilst is may sound good to suggest that who you are is good enough, and that you should focus on bringing your whole self to work, if you are unpleasant — perhaps even if you hold socially abhorrent views around, say, race or gender — is that still okay? Should you bring these aspects of yourself to work?

I think the first thing to say is that most people are not awful people — in fact the vast majority of us have good and bad in our character, have up days and down days, sometimes present the best versions of ourselves and sometimes let ourselves down. So — outside of the sociopaths of this world — most of us start from a similar place in terms of our intentions and motivations. I don’t think, for example, I have ever come across anybody at work who has deliberately gone out of their way to be unpleasant for its own sake.

What can be a distinguishing feature, however, is how far you are prepared to learn and grow as a leader, and in particular how far you are prepared to listen to feedback from those around you to help you to improve your leadership.

This is, in fact, one of the key components of an authentic leadership approach: the commitment to not just knowing yourself, but to bettering yourself. Just ‘being yourself’ isn’t enough.

For after all, although Polonius did indeed say, ‘To thine own self be true”, he said it at the end of a speech that lists a number of other behaviours that he encourages his son, Laertes, to exhibit.

So knowing yourself is not enough — you have to understand yourself, and be honest about those areas that you need to improve upon as well as those that are strengths to be celebrated. And, of course, effective feedback is a key part of this because, important as it is to ‘know your soul in the dark’, leadership is not just about you — it is about how you impact upon others. Which means how others perceive you is a key part of leadership, not least because the judgement of whether or not you are an arsehole is not just for you to make.

Gathering effective feedback is a topic that deserves more attention than I will give it here but even a cursory glance at the topic suggests that far more has been written about the ‘giving’ of feedback than about the ‘receiving’ of feedback (go on — google ‘effective feedback’). So here are a few tips for gathering effective feedback to consider:

• Frame the request carefully, with space for open answers. There may be times where you want to check a very specific thing (e.g. looking for feedback on how a presentation came across), but more likely you want to give people the space to tell you things you may not have considered. That is part of the point.
• Know your power. Some of the most important feedback you will get will be from people who may be worried about how you will respond. Think about how to create an atmosphere where people will be honest — including via anonymous routes. Be clear you are looking for ways to improve, not just ego-building compliments.
• Act visibly on the feedback. Show people that you have listened to what you have been told (including sharing where relevant) and that you are responding to that feedback. This will encourage people to engage in the future.
• Do it regularly. Circumstances change, teams change, behaviours change. Keep asking people for feedback, keep learning, keep growing.

But hang on — didn’t we say that a key benefit of authentic leadership was that it felt effortless? That ‘learned behaviour’ could be seen as uninspiring? How does that square with the idea of gathering feedback and changing practice? Isn’t that learned behaviour?

Well, yes and no.

It is important that you filter and consider the feedback you get, and in particular make sure that you are discerning about who you pay most attention to and how you respond to it. Brené Brown makes much of being clear that some feedback is worth more than others, in particular that you should pay especial attention to those ‘in the arena’ with you and less to commentators. So the thoughts of your team, those working with you every day, dealing with the same issues, responding to the same pressures, should carry more weight than outsiders with no skin in the game.

On top of this, our friend Polonius helps us again with more advice for Laertes:

“Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment.”

In other words, listen to that feedback, explore it, use it to challenge yourself, but don’t just take it as gospel, not least because you are likely to get different views and perspectives, so you will never be able to please everybody. This can be a useful way of trying to overcome the tension between being yourself and improving based on feedback — be discerning in which feedback to take action on, in part filtered through the lens of your understanding of yourself.

An example: I am habitually a sweary person. I swear. A lot. And there isn’t much of a natural filter when I am at work. (This is, incidentally, where I diverge from Polonius who says, “Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.”) I have absolutely had feedback from people — people I work closely with, respect, and trust — that my swearing is a problem. It can seem unprofessional, disrespectful, and unnecessary. But I have also had the opposite feedback — that my swearing helps to create an atmosphere where people feel open to speak their minds, supports less hierarchical work patterns, and engenders a trust in what I am saying because it is clearly unfiltered. I have thought a lot about both elements of this feedback and, recognising my own natural preferences, have sought to make a virtue of my swearing to promote the positive elements people have suggested exist. This isn’t the same as saying I don’t care that it upsets some people and in fact I go out of my way to work out who those people are and to make a genuine effort to avoid swearing where I can when I am with them. But I have accepted that I will swear more than average and have considered how to manage that, rather than to eradicate something that is such a natural part of who I am.

This leads to a related point which is a distinction between learned behaviour and false behaviour. As stated above, learned behaviour is the use of a skill that is uncomfortable to you and it has the downside that it can fail to inspire. Think, for example, about a time when you have been listening to a speech delivered by somebody who is nervous and clearly hates speaking to a crowd. It can be difficult to sit through and the struggle to deliver the speech can distract from the impact of the message. But it often also evokes a sense of sympathy (maybe even empathy!) that tends to create a kindness in judgement. Or to go back to the example at the beginning, an athlete struggling in a race might not inspire wonder, but they can inspire an appreciation of the effort made.

A false behaviour is something different. It is motivated not by a desire to develop and grow — to take on a challenge — but rather to hide something. It is disingenuous and manipulative. At its best, it might be a superficial consideration of an issue (a ‘tick box’ approach to issues around diversity and inclusion for example) so that somebody can be seen to be doing the right thing. At its worst it has a more damaging intent, seeking to deliberately misrepresent.

So, to go back to our earlier question, if you look deep down into your soul, if you seek feedback, and you discover that you are (at least in part) an arsehole, the critical thing is to work out how to make genuine changes to improve who you are and how you are perceived. This should absolutely include taking on learned behaviours if needed, and you can make this more powerful by being open with your team what you are doing and why so they understand and can make allowances for any ‘clunkiness’. And be clear, of course, that the more you engage in a ‘learned behaviour’, the more comfortable it is likely to feel and the better you are likely to become at it.

Put another way, consider how to take the understanding of yourself and the feedback you get to work towards the best version of yourself. This isn’t about being somebody else — it is still about being you, authentically you — but with the humility to want to improve.

And you should avoid the defensive thought process that leads you to false behaviours — cursory and shallow changes to give a false impression of growth and learning. The instincts of those around you — of your peers, your team, your manager — will kick in and you will lose trust and authority. Allowing a brief slip into my swearing self, people can ‘smell a w*nker’ and know to keep their distance.

One final point. If you do come to the realisation that you are an honest-to-goodness bully, a racist, a misogynist, and you are not prepared to put in the effort to improve on this serious character flaw, then false behaviour might be the best you can aim for. Even if you are being disingenuous, even if you don’t believe in your actions, at least it might provide some respite for the people around you. The final word to Polonius: “Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.”