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 Some time ago, I heard a young
woman say, “I am enough.” I was struck and intrigued by the
expression, and so I set out to research it. It originated with
Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist, who was asked how he did what
he did, so successfully. His response was, “Before a session
with a client, I let myself know that ‘I am enough.’ Not perfect
– because perfect wouldn’t be enough. But I am human, and there
is nothing that this client can say or do or feel that I cannot
feel in myself. I can be with them. I am enough.”
This echoes the serenity of mind,
the calm spirit that characterizes a Mensch. A Mensch is a
person of integrity, a quality that is defined in the dictionary
as ‘a state of being complete or undivided.’
The Leader as a Mensch
is the epitome of authenticity. When we are in the presence of a
Mensch, we cannot help but notice the absence of artificiality.
We sense that we are confronted with a real person, one who
doesn’t set out to make an impression. A Mensch just is. These
leaders come from the standpoint of being enough, of seeing
themselves as complete human beings, providing a unique
contribution to the world by giving their own brand of wisdom,
ingenuity, perceptiveness, fairness, and fierce loyalty to their
organizations, and to those they lead.
Leadership Attributes
Authenticity also implies a
steadfast commitment to honesty, to being truthful. To that end,
consider the notion of the corporate child: We are all a product
of our upbringing, and our families of origin were the first
organizations that we experienced. This is where we first
learned about power, hierarchy, rules of conduct, competition
for rewards and avoidance of punishment. This is where we also
learned to lie. In longitudinal studies of young children and
lying, it was found that if children who are still lying by age
seven, they are likely to continue the behavior for the rest of
their childhood. Other research has found that when adults are
asked to keep diaries of their own lies, they average one lie
per day. The Leader as a Mensch strives to promote truth telling
in the organization. He or she does so by the eloquence of their
example. Are you known as a truth teller in your organization?
12 Effective Leadership Roles
Part of a Mensch’s code of conduct
is that they are also promise-keepers. This applies to even the
smallest of promises. Years ago, I met the
CEO of a
Fortune 500 organization. I noticed something about him. He
carried with him a small, black notebook into which he noted
down any promise he made. No matter how junior the person was to
whom he spoke, he made the same effort to note down his promises
to that person so that he could follow through. We can rely on
the word of such a person. We don’t hear the expression ‘a
gentleman’s agreement’ as often any more. It refers to an
unwritten agreement backed only by the integrity of the
individuals involved in the transaction. It is an agreement
based on honor, on the premise that the person’s word is the
pledge. This is one of the sterling qualities of a Mensch.
Leader
360
Conformity smoothes our day’s
journey at work. Blind conformity, however, has its downsides.
It saps creativity, for one. It removes all sense of
individuality. If you are a leader who demands conformity, I
encourage you to think how this might erode your constituents’
authenticity as they are pressured to conform. I once worked for
a leader in a technology company, who adopted, as part of the
company values, the notion of ‘intelligent disobedience.’ The
concept comes from Seeing Eye dogs. While dogs must learn to
obey the commands of the blind person, they must also know when
they need to disobey commands that can put the owner in harm’s
way, such as when a car is approaching. Intelligent disobedience
is not about being difficult and disobeying for disobedience
sake. Rather, it is about being given the authority to use your
judgment—for example, when a decision no longer applies, or when
a rule interferes with the wellbeing of the customer.
 A major tenet of The Leader as a
Mensch is transparent
communication, a by-product of their lucid
thinking and uncompromising ethic. They say a great deal with a
few words, and there is no communication gap between their
internal vision of the world and its outward expression. There
is directness in their language – we experience it as one might
a black and white photograph, where the attention to the subject
is not skewed by color. This transparency in communication is
the holy grail of leadership, especially today – with a reported
four million blogs in the blogosphere – where a lack of
transparency can be particularly detrimental to an organization.
Managerial Communication
Much has been written about ‘CEO
disease’ – a term that describes the isolation that surrounds a
leader when constituents are reluctant to bring bad news or
worst-case scenarios to them, for fear that such disclosure
might trigger a shoot-the-messenger reaction. Establish a
culture that values openness – a literal, not only figurative,
open-door policy. Make it safe for employees to stick their neck
out. Consider instituting ‘Giraffe Awards’ to encourage people
to stick their necks out for the overall good of the company and
its stakeholders.
A fallout of working for, or being
associated with, an inauthentic leader is that this person robs
us of our own authenticity as we tread carefully around them,
playing a slow, cautious chess game. We carefully watch the
metrics – we focus on what keeps us safe in our jobs. In the
process they don’t get the best out of us – they get our labor,
but not our full engagement – that X factor that divides high
performance from minimum acceptable standards. We all know too
well that high engagement is one of the keys to building a
high-performance, sustainable organization in today’s
competitive environment. It’s what every organization seeks:
employees who give their discretionary effort every day, people
who go the extra mile to help their organization achieve
critical goals. There are many ways to foster that engagement in
organizations – one of them is to take a close look at the
quality of the leader. Is the leader an authentic person? Do
people feel that the leader is who he or she says they are? Does
that person engender trust, that is, are people convinced that
the leader has no hidden agenda, and that the person genuinely
cares for them? All of these factors affect engagement and the
bottom line. Lack of authenticity in a leader carries a hefty
price tag.
12 Major Causes of Failure in Leadership
A test of our veracity as leaders
is the annual or semi-annual performance reviews. While a
necessary and useful aspect of corporate life, these can be
instruments of mild torture for those being reviewed. No matter
how busy you are with other more pressing business issues,
promise yourself to enter those review sessions with the utmost
of authenticity. Before you write the first word, sit back and
see that person as a real human being. It is very difficult to
capture the sum totality of an individual in a form. More
animosity and erosion of trust has been unnecessarily generated
through the dreaded performance reviews than through any other
HR process. A few decades ago, a leader to whom I reported and
for whom I had great respect, reviewed my performance and wrote
‘rarely, if ever late’ as the rating for my attendance. When I
pointed out that, in fact, I was never late, he said that he
couldn’t write that, as this might be perceived by head office
as the ‘halo effect’ because ‘no one is never late,’ and that
this would cast doubt on the veracity of all the other comments
in the performance reviews. If you are unsure how to rate
someone because you have not had a chance to observe them in a
certain behavior, level with them, and ask their help in rating
that particular aspect of their performance instead of guessing.
Watch the level of trust soar with that individual.
Leadership is difficult work, and
it can be easy to stray from who we are at the core in order to
satisfy the business imperatives. Being totally authentic may
present particular challenges in
today’s highly competitive environments where, for example, proprietary knowledge needs to
be closely guarded, or where news of impending layoffs needs to
be managed in order to avoid losing key staff. We can be
unwittingly mired in politics. We sometimes find ourselves in
situations where we need to continuously look over our shoulder
to protect ourselves. We cannot always trust that others are
genuine with us. Even with the best of intentions, even when we
strive to do our very best, others will sometimes betray us.
Much happens in the course of our careers as we climb the
achievement ladder. We can sometimes, slowly and imperceptibly,
wander off from our authentic selves, the core of who we are.
Despite all of this, we need to make every effort to stay true
to who we are. Find the way to yourself. Or, as Howard Thurman
eloquently said, “Find the grain in your own wood.”
Here are what I call the ‘leaves’
of authenticity
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Living your values as a leader
every day is an important key component of authentic
leadership. However, you need to examine these values
periodically to consider their validity in today’s
environment. Examine whether or not they still fit your
current reality. Work-life balance, for example, is no
longer a perk – it may be an essential requirement for
attracting the best minds to your organization.
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Are you in the habit of making
hasty promises that you know from past experience you are
unable to keep? Think back on what promises you made, to
whom, and see if you can fulfill some of these. In
particular, think twice about promises you make to young
people. Breaking those promises is particularly damaging to
their views of the world and adults.
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There is a real freedom when we
shed all affectation. Are there times in your life when you
see yourself being forced to put on a show to make an
impression on others? Resolve to stop that, once and for
all. Watch yourself soar when you are unencumbered by the
weight of pretense. Tell yourself, “I am enough” – and mean
it.
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Straight talk, self-confidence
and simplicity – these are the building blocks of substance;
the triumph over image. Think about how you can make these a
daily habit.
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Are there areas in your life
where you might lack consistency without intending to? For
example, are you kind to some people, but not to others? Are
you completely truthful in some circumstances, but not in
others? What does this insight tell you?
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Start collecting personal
stories that you can use to illustrate to others important
aspects of your leadership style, such as, what motivates
you to lead; what your philosophy of leading is; and who you
are as a person. Personal stories are the most effective
form of storytelling for leaders.
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Adversity reveals our true
character. Consider your conduct when things go wrong.
Remind yourself that, as a leader, you are continuously
under a looking glass. People want to be inspired by you.
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When you are given a script you
didn’t write for a presentation that you have to deliver,
spend extra time to make the words your own. Purge your
presentations of inadvertently inflated language, which
often ends with others questioning our authenticity as a
speaker. For example, replace the words ‘eating
establishments’ with ‘restaurants’, ‘learning environments’
with ‘schools’ or ‘universities’, ‘expeditious’ with
‘efficient.’ Take inspiration from Winston Churchill, who
said, “Speak in short, homely words of common usage.”
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Are you forced to live in
disharmony between who you are and what you do? Have you
turned a deaf ear to the whispers of your heart? Resolve
today to take action to start the journey back to finding
yourself, to reconnecting with your passions and values. If
this is not possible for you because of restrictions in your
current circumstance, think about small compromises that you
can start making right now to be more in a state of harmony.
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If you are an emergent leader,
comfortable with seeking approval before making any
decisions, develop a plan to start practicing self-reliance.
Start with smaller-scale decisions, and progressively move
on to more significant ones. Only when we free ourselves
from the need to have others’ approval can we truly start to
evolve into the authentic leaders we were meant to be.
Copyright
© 2009 by Bruna Martinuzzi.
All Rights Reserved.
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