Tuesday 27 July 2010
talent-A thought
It is the ability to listen, assimilate and be relevant that distinguishes talent from the rest.
Sunday 18 July 2010
Recommendation
Sunday 11 July 2010
Saturday 10 July 2010
Now is all there is.
How often do we really live in the moment, in the here and now? We know when it happens:
When we see a sunset, and feel its impact, as it reaches out and touches us,
When a piece of music transports us to a place and transcends our understanding,
When a smile from our children banishes in an instant our pre- occupations,
And the touch of a hand from the one you love, causes your heart to leap,
These are moments of real clarity that we experience in the present. They are pure, nurturing and real. And yet these experiences are in the minority when compared to the rest of our lives, why is that?
What is that we are doing so that these moments of clarity are crowded out, and are reserved for times when events “break through”?
Most of these moments happen as a result of something external to us. They arise as a result of an external stimulus. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be like this all the time, without the need of something or someone else to take us there?
Could it be that we spend so much time dreaming of a future that never arrives, that binds us into a state of suspended happiness, and the now becomes a place we are passing through, rather the only real true place to be.
“I can’t wait for my holiday”
“All will be fine when I have that new………….”
“I will rest at the weekend”
If the now is reduced to a place on the way to somewhere better, we will never arrive there.
Our evolutionary past puts us in a state of constant want. A want for water, food shelter, all of which in their day carried significant positive or negative survival payoffs, but this is now largely a redundant requirement and yet the want still exists. It gets channeled elsewhere. This constant wanting traps us into a confusion of where happiness lies. It sets up a dynamic of constantly looking for a better tomorrow, at the expense of living today. (That may well have been appropriate when if we didn’t plan for tomorrow we may have run out of food or been eaten by a sabre toothed tiger).
We end up being sad in the pleasures of today, because we are unable to stop thinking about all the good things we do not yet have.
We have also developed an addiction to the pleasure of the senses at the expense of a deeper pleasure of sustainable satisfaction.
So how about we find 30 minutes everyday to do nothing other than look at the sky, hear the rustling of the trees, listen to that piece of music, close our eyes and breath, and smile because NOW is all there is.
How often do we really live in the moment, in the here and now? We know when it happens:
When we see a sunset, and feel its impact, as it reaches out and touches us,
When a piece of music transports us to a place and transcends our understanding,
When a smile from our children banishes in an instant our pre- occupations,
And the touch of a hand from the one you love, causes your heart to leap,
These are moments of real clarity that we experience in the present. They are pure, nurturing and real. And yet these experiences are in the minority when compared to the rest of our lives, why is that?
What is that we are doing so that these moments of clarity are crowded out, and are reserved for times when events “break through”?
Most of these moments happen as a result of something external to us. They arise as a result of an external stimulus. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be like this all the time, without the need of something or someone else to take us there?
Could it be that we spend so much time dreaming of a future that never arrives, that binds us into a state of suspended happiness, and the now becomes a place we are passing through, rather the only real true place to be.
“I can’t wait for my holiday”
“All will be fine when I have that new………….”
“I will rest at the weekend”
If the now is reduced to a place on the way to somewhere better, we will never arrive there.
Our evolutionary past puts us in a state of constant want. A want for water, food shelter, all of which in their day carried significant positive or negative survival payoffs, but this is now largely a redundant requirement and yet the want still exists. It gets channeled elsewhere. This constant wanting traps us into a confusion of where happiness lies. It sets up a dynamic of constantly looking for a better tomorrow, at the expense of living today. (That may well have been appropriate when if we didn’t plan for tomorrow we may have run out of food or been eaten by a sabre toothed tiger).
We end up being sad in the pleasures of today, because we are unable to stop thinking about all the good things we do not yet have.
We have also developed an addiction to the pleasure of the senses at the expense of a deeper pleasure of sustainable satisfaction.
So how about we find 30 minutes everyday to do nothing other than look at the sky, hear the rustling of the trees, listen to that piece of music, close our eyes and breath, and smile because NOW is all there is.
Wednesday 7 July 2010
Horrifying but sadly not surprising-A sequel
Horrifying but sadly not surprising-A sequel
My recent note, chronicling my friend John’s experience at the hands of Comet precipitated an unprecedented level of response. Mostly from John naturally, who would be consulting a lawyer, if he could find one he could bear to be in the company of for the time it would take to instruct them, to sue me for breach of privacy.
And so at the risk of further upsetting him, but in the certain knowledge that no legal action will follow, I thought I would share with you my experience at John Lewis today. Which in case I didn’t mention it in my earlier note was one of the establishments I suggested, nay implored John to buy his camera from.
In advance of a trip to Worcester and then on to Cheltenham tomorrow I was in need of a satellite navigation system, having totally lost the ability to drive and read a map at the same time due to over reliance on them. It strikes me as I write this, that this is just the sort of thing I ought, with my grumpy old man signature, rile against. Lost art of map reading, idiots driving their cars into the sea because they slavishly follow, children not knowing whether Scotland is North or South (although not knowing where Scotland is may not be a great loss), etc…. you know the sort of thing, I can even hear myself saying all this. So am I going to return it to John Lewis tomorrow, on account of this belated self-discovery? Of course not! Where’s the fun in that? One should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, nor should one strive for personal internal consistency that road most assuredly leads to madness.
Anyway back to my experience at the shop John should have gone to.
I arrived, parked the car, I should perhaps at this stage explain why I needed a new satellite navigation system (I am sorry I cannot bring myself to say or type the usual abbreviation), or more specifically why I own a car that doesn’t have one in it already.
As some of you will know I do have a tendency to oscillate between the opposite ends of the automobile spectrum; an Aston Martin followed by a 6 year old diesel Audi and a Porsche 911 followed by a Toyota Prius (before they became fashionable in Hollywood I should say) So the disposal of my 6.3 litre Mercedes in exchange for a Mini is following a familiar well worn pattern. As to the underlying motivation and psychological fragility this demonstrates, that is between my therapist and me!
So back to where John should have been last week. I entered the store, walked past, well to be honest I am not sure what I walked past, shops do not hold a great attraction for me, primarily because they usually contain a lot of people. Down the escalator, turned right and right again, towards the computers and televisions and arrived at the desk. I had barely stopped when I smart polite man said, “Can I help you sir?” I confess a joyous feeling came over me at that moment, not because I was about to receive excellent service, but because later today I knew I would be writing this, schadenfreude I believe it is know as in Germany. Unbecoming as it maybe, but the instinctive pleasure we feel when misfortune befalls someone else, All in the shop John should have gone to. How very delicious!
“I would like a satellite Navigation System please” stressing the full use of the name rather than the usual abbreviation. “Certainly sir on the wall over there, let me show you” I turned to see an array of 12or so systems. This will be interesting I thought to myself.
We arrived, I paused, He sensed my hesitation, “Will you be needing European maps?”
“No”
“That rules these 4 out, would you like traffic updates?”
“No”
“That rules these out, so you are left with these four, big screen or small screen?”
“Big”
“That leaves a choice of two, they both do the same thing, this one has an extra feature, it is programmed to “know” when certain roads are likely to be busy”
“I’ll take that one”
He disappeared to retrieve one, returned and before I could enquire, he said it was all ready to go, no need for batteries or anything else. I thanked him and walked over to the check out. Hardly able to contain my pleasure at the thought of sitting here writing this.
He was smart, bright courteous, knew his product, not once did he try to sell me anything, he helped me buy.
So I was in and out in about 7 minutes.
I have been agonising for the last 10 minutes, as to whether I should include this next episode. I should I have concluded.
I walked over to the check out area. I was met by a tall man wearing what was a Spivey suit, not in-keeping with the John Lewis brand I thought. I then looked up and he had one of those hairstyles that isn’t a style at all, in which the hair has been groomed to go in different directions at the same time. Ah no matter I thought, or in the modern vernacular “whatever”
“Is this for you sir?” Oh please is it really necessary to try to engage me in mindless conversation, I thought. And then realised that the previous assistant had not done that at all,
He provide me with the information, no more no less, I had thanked him for his help, he had said it was a pleasure and I was gone.
And now this goon wants to spoil it all by talking to me.
“Planning to do a lot of driving?” was his next attempt.
Do you recall that moment in the first Terminator film, when he is asked a question and we see the various possible responses he could use on the computer screen in his eye? Fortunately for all, I chose the last option my mind presented me with-“say nothing”
So it appears they are in fact everywhere!
My recent note, chronicling my friend John’s experience at the hands of Comet precipitated an unprecedented level of response. Mostly from John naturally, who would be consulting a lawyer, if he could find one he could bear to be in the company of for the time it would take to instruct them, to sue me for breach of privacy.
And so at the risk of further upsetting him, but in the certain knowledge that no legal action will follow, I thought I would share with you my experience at John Lewis today. Which in case I didn’t mention it in my earlier note was one of the establishments I suggested, nay implored John to buy his camera from.
In advance of a trip to Worcester and then on to Cheltenham tomorrow I was in need of a satellite navigation system, having totally lost the ability to drive and read a map at the same time due to over reliance on them. It strikes me as I write this, that this is just the sort of thing I ought, with my grumpy old man signature, rile against. Lost art of map reading, idiots driving their cars into the sea because they slavishly follow, children not knowing whether Scotland is North or South (although not knowing where Scotland is may not be a great loss), etc…. you know the sort of thing, I can even hear myself saying all this. So am I going to return it to John Lewis tomorrow, on account of this belated self-discovery? Of course not! Where’s the fun in that? One should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, nor should one strive for personal internal consistency that road most assuredly leads to madness.
Anyway back to my experience at the shop John should have gone to.
I arrived, parked the car, I should perhaps at this stage explain why I needed a new satellite navigation system (I am sorry I cannot bring myself to say or type the usual abbreviation), or more specifically why I own a car that doesn’t have one in it already.
As some of you will know I do have a tendency to oscillate between the opposite ends of the automobile spectrum; an Aston Martin followed by a 6 year old diesel Audi and a Porsche 911 followed by a Toyota Prius (before they became fashionable in Hollywood I should say) So the disposal of my 6.3 litre Mercedes in exchange for a Mini is following a familiar well worn pattern. As to the underlying motivation and psychological fragility this demonstrates, that is between my therapist and me!
So back to where John should have been last week. I entered the store, walked past, well to be honest I am not sure what I walked past, shops do not hold a great attraction for me, primarily because they usually contain a lot of people. Down the escalator, turned right and right again, towards the computers and televisions and arrived at the desk. I had barely stopped when I smart polite man said, “Can I help you sir?” I confess a joyous feeling came over me at that moment, not because I was about to receive excellent service, but because later today I knew I would be writing this, schadenfreude I believe it is know as in Germany. Unbecoming as it maybe, but the instinctive pleasure we feel when misfortune befalls someone else, All in the shop John should have gone to. How very delicious!
“I would like a satellite Navigation System please” stressing the full use of the name rather than the usual abbreviation. “Certainly sir on the wall over there, let me show you” I turned to see an array of 12or so systems. This will be interesting I thought to myself.
We arrived, I paused, He sensed my hesitation, “Will you be needing European maps?”
“No”
“That rules these 4 out, would you like traffic updates?”
“No”
“That rules these out, so you are left with these four, big screen or small screen?”
“Big”
“That leaves a choice of two, they both do the same thing, this one has an extra feature, it is programmed to “know” when certain roads are likely to be busy”
“I’ll take that one”
He disappeared to retrieve one, returned and before I could enquire, he said it was all ready to go, no need for batteries or anything else. I thanked him and walked over to the check out. Hardly able to contain my pleasure at the thought of sitting here writing this.
He was smart, bright courteous, knew his product, not once did he try to sell me anything, he helped me buy.
So I was in and out in about 7 minutes.
I have been agonising for the last 10 minutes, as to whether I should include this next episode. I should I have concluded.
I walked over to the check out area. I was met by a tall man wearing what was a Spivey suit, not in-keeping with the John Lewis brand I thought. I then looked up and he had one of those hairstyles that isn’t a style at all, in which the hair has been groomed to go in different directions at the same time. Ah no matter I thought, or in the modern vernacular “whatever”
“Is this for you sir?” Oh please is it really necessary to try to engage me in mindless conversation, I thought. And then realised that the previous assistant had not done that at all,
He provide me with the information, no more no less, I had thanked him for his help, he had said it was a pleasure and I was gone.
And now this goon wants to spoil it all by talking to me.
“Planning to do a lot of driving?” was his next attempt.
Do you recall that moment in the first Terminator film, when he is asked a question and we see the various possible responses he could use on the computer screen in his eye? Fortunately for all, I chose the last option my mind presented me with-“say nothing”
So it appears they are in fact everywhere!
More?
While we all are running faster to fit more into our lives, so we can shop more, have more, buy more, play more, eat more and then diet more, talk more, holiday more and generally just do more; reflect on this:
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. – Albert Einstein.
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. – Albert Einstein.
Sunday 4 July 2010
An Authentic Life
An Authentic Life
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Much is made of the word “Authentic”; it peppers our discussions and journals. Much like the word “love”, it is thrown around and tossed into conversations so that its purer, perfect meaning is diminished by its overuse. Here we will look at what it might mean to live an authentic life.
An Authentic life is one where we live according to the needs of our inner being, rather than the demands of society or our early conditioning. That is not to say that if we are leading a life that accords to societal norms we cannot be leading an authentic life. The critical distinguishing feature is having an understanding and awareness of what is driving our behaviour, rather simply conforming to the received wisdom of society.
Such behaviour may therefore accord with cultural norms, but for the reason that those norms appear on consideration to be appropriate, rather than blindly, simply because they happen to be the current norms. Such authenticity is a positive outcome of examined and informed motivation rather than a negative outcome of rejection of the expectations of others.
Living true to one’s self does not therefore mean we do not consider or take account of others and their expectations. If we accept as human beings we are innately built with a moral compass and an ethical barometer, being true to ourselves will necessarily require being considerate to the interests and feelings of others. There are challenges and difficulties associated with this; it is problematic to really understand what is driving our behaviour; cultural norms or core beliefs.
How do we reconcile being true to our core beliefs when to do so would be upsetting and/or offensive to others?
Andre Gide the 20th century French novelist wrote:
“It is better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not”
“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable”.
Much is written about the need to be authentic in a working environment, legions of books are written on “Authentic Leadership” A quick search on Google will reveal hundreds upon hundreds of such books as well as consultants offering transformational experiential courses and interventions on Authenticity
If we stop for a moment, and start from a different place. Authentic leadership? What do these gurus mean by that? Presumably there is something we should indentify as inauthentic leadership, and authentic leadership would be the opposite of that. Well what would that look like?
If the opposite of a statement is so clearly absurd, the statement itself can hardly be considered to be insightful, or set us on a path of learning or discovery.
So where does that take us, we have a circular definition; the definition of leadership must mean in part to be authentic. Can you be a leader without being authentic? I will seek to demonstrate-No. Well at least you cannot be a leader of people without being authentic.
You can manage, direct, mandate, persuade but you will not lead.
What do leaders do that managers do not? How do we capture that essence? Leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others to action because they deeply understand the invisible forces that shape us all. They have an ability to connect with people, in all dimensions of the human existence, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually they are capable of balancing each of these as the situation dictates, but they are always sensitive to each of these.
Why is this so important? Fundamentally each of us need to be value and appreciated for who we are, and not what we do. We have a basic need to be recognized and appreciated. Psychologists have recognized that for a complete human existence we each need; Recognition, Stimulation and Structure. (There are of course other crucially important things, such as love) Effective leaders have an intuitive understanding of these three needs.
Recognition
To be valued for who we are. So many mangers and organizations make the mistake of valuing people by reference to what they do solely, what their output is. We are not what we produce, what we deliver, that is not the essence of our being, it is part of us and certainly needs to be measured evaluated and recognized. Regrettably too many organizations stop there.
The longer this goes on the more people will define their perceived worth to the organization solely by reference to their output. This is a problem because we all have a deep fundamental need to be appreciated for who we are. If we are spending upwards of 8 hours a day in an environment, which does not pay attention to this deep, need, we cannot make a real connection with the organization, there no sense of affiliation. Our personal characteristics that distinguish us from others are not being seen and appreciated. We become indistinguishable from anyone else who delivers the same output, and so we are not being recognized.
Put another way we have a real need to be seen as and treated as individuals- Leaders have the capability to do this.
This is particularly important when leaders are setting about the business of building a team. Will Schutz observed “ the way I make a group is not to try to make them into a group but to help everyone become more like they want to be”
That requires huge bravery and courage, in a demanding world of short-term targets and performance metrics, where there remains a huge amount of management and decision making to be done. But without this Bravery a group will not be created. There is countless research on high performing teams which all point in the same direction; the whole will only become more than the sum of the parts, if each part is nurtured appropriately so that eventually the parts nurture and develop each other.
A leaders role here is to create the environment for that to happen, She will have chosen the people with the talent and capability, whether they recognize yet themselves.
Stimulation
We all need stimulation, Intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Can a leader provide a work environment, which can deliver on all three dimensions? Is it really the role of employers to deliver this depth? Well let’s ask the question in a different way. All employers want motivated, dedicated and committed employees. They all want to retain their talent. You only need to pick up a business magazine to see how big a deal it is to major corporations. They all spend millions of pounds a year on external consultants a year seeking to address this. So if that is their aim, the question is not “Can a leader deliver on all three dimensions?” The question is “why would she think she can deliver on what she and the company want without doing so?”
Structure
Structure and stability are similarly a basic human need. The need for security, safety and consistency run deep in us all.
This does require subjective judgment. Too much stifles creativity and recognition as mentioned above. Too little will create uncertainly and anxiety for all, irrespective of the level of personal confidence. Without a structure people find it difficult to develop a sense of affiliation.
A leader will need to be hugely flexible in her approach to this. This is not a painting by numbers exercise. It requires subtlety, tact and a massive amount of sensitivity to the situation, the people involved and the issue at hand. All people will need differing levels structure, and all people will require different levels of structure as their personal circumstances change. Individual’s structural requirements change constantly and a leader will need to be sensitive to this, not indulgent of it, but aware of it so as to maximize the contribution of each individual.
A leader therefore needs to understand these three basic individual needs and pay constant attention to them.
So we return to the opening question, why do this require a leader to be authentic? And consequently why is authentic leadership a tautology?
Each of the component parts of RSS will fail if the leader is not telling the truth, or more precisely being true to herself.
Or to put it another way, why is it not possible to fake these things or spin them in a way that makes them seem sincere and genuine? Perhaps it is in the short term, but not in the long term. All of us have the unconscious ability to sense these things; an antenna for inconsistency, genuineness and openness makes us feel comfortable.
“I find you likeable if I like myself in your presence, if you create an atmosphere within which I like myself”-Will Shutz.
Certain people are trained to read body language in real detail and interpret that language. We all have this ability, it is innate in us. We may not have the full language or be able to fully articulate it. But we feel inconsistencies between voice and body, language and tone, facial expressions and spoken word.
We are often shown this on television when politicians are presenting. An expert in the studio interprets the unspoken messages. This rarely surprises us, it is confirmatory of what we already sensed.
So people will feel our lack of authenticity even if they don’t know they do (for more on this see Blink-Malcolm Gladwell and various by Paul Ekman)
And also according to Schutz people will feel our openness and authenticity as we create an environment in which they like themselves.
So, in conclusion people will notice whether we are authentic or not. If we are not it is impossible for them to feel recognized by us for who they are, only for what they do.
We may be able to stimulate them intellectually, but not emotionally or spiritually. I think it is a basic truth that we cannot make meaningful emotional connections with others without being true.
Although a lot of structure may be seen as supportive scaffolding to the overall aim, the fundamentals of knowing how each of us fit in to the aims of the organization is crucial to the capacity to generate affiliation. Similar to recognition, people’s inconsistency antenna will feel this if it is not true
So we now come to what I think is the hard bit. How do we do it?
If we assume that most people in a leadership position don’t deliberately knowingly lie to their people (a reasonable if not totally true assumption)
Why is that we have such a paucity of good leaders?
I think there are a number of interesting factors at play here:
1 Too often leaders tell people what they think they want to hear
2 More interestingly Leaders don’t really deeply know what they believe or what their own values are.
3 There is often a lack of personal values which even if people don’t have the same values, they can at least recognize that the individual is personally consistent.
All of these will undermine authenticity. In summary a great leader will need to have
1 A very high degree of self awareness
2 A clearly understood set of personal values
3 The courage to live by those and the humility to accept that on occasion she will fall below that standard.
4 An ability to create an atmosphere in which people can be who they want to be.
5 Critically and not yet discussed see themselves as serving the people they are leading and not the other way around.
A rarely appreciated part of developing self-awareness is to understand that it involves hearing messages from your body. (Schutz) That is something that very few people have developed to ability to do. Our body is sending these messages all the time, we need to quieten our mind and listen to these messages.
A slight digression: we seem to separate sensory/physical pleasures from cerebral/intellectual pleasures. Treating these as distinct and different, responding to and understood by different parts of us. This separation is artificial and does not properly represent how we truly function. Joy, happiness, sadness and anger are all full human emotions to be felt and understood by our whole being. Who has not on reading a poem (a non physical activity)
been moved to tears or to feel sadness or joy in the pit of their stomach?
There is a whole subject here, which I may write about separately.
Attempting to be someone you are not will eventually lead to misery and possibly worse, it may make you rich financially along the way but it will not bring fulfilment.
This is why a lot of books on Leadership are useless. It is not a skill or competence that can be learnt from a book anymore than you can learn how to love from a book.
We know that love is an emotional state (I shall resist the temptation to write on this subject for fear disappearing down a rabbit hole never to return!); we also understand that it has an intellectual and spiritual element to it to. It is the same with Leadership we know it has an intellectual element but recognize less the emotional and spiritual aspects.
People around you will know, even if you don’t, whether you are being authentic. You may believe what you are saying is a true reflection of what you really believe. But it may not be and so often is not. Our core beliefs are so often obscured from ourselves. Confused by societal norms and expectations, our learned behaviour from our surroundings our peers and mentors. Clichéd definitions abound of great leaders, which we then believe we need to imitate.
So until we have a deep understanding of who we are and what we believe, we are in no position to lead others. So destroy all your leadership books and cancel all your courses on leadership and instead, look inward and discover who you are.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates said that at his trial for heresy.
He was on trial for encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves. The sentence was death but Socrates had the option of suggesting an alternative punishment. He could have chosen life in prison or exile, and would likely have avoided death. But Socrates believed that these alternatives would rob him of the only thing that made life useful: Examining the world around him and discussing how to make the world a better place. Without his “examined life” there was no point in living. So he suggested that Athens reward him for his service to society. The result, of course, is that they had no alternative and were forced to vote for a punishment of death.
Luckily, we don’t have to choose between an examined life and death. But the sad thing is, most people avoid leading an examined life. It’s not that they don’t have time or make time. They actively avoid examining their lives.
Those aspiring to be leaders will need to examine their lives if they are to be successful.
I would suggest that we would all benefit from examining our lives more deeply but that is for another day.
When we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves. Various emotional states are intensified by self-awareness. People are more likely to align their behaviour with their standards when made self-aware. People will be negatively affected if they don’t live up to their personal standards. Various environmental cues and situations can induce awareness of the self, such as mirrors, an audience, or being videotaped or recorded.
It is the inconsistency between behaviour and internal values that causes confusion to other people and also, but not as readily seen, sets up an internal level of stress understood by the body but not always the mind.
So if you are a leader of people, know thy self. If you are being lead, and you don’t believe what you are being told, trust your instincts, you will be right.
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Much is made of the word “Authentic”; it peppers our discussions and journals. Much like the word “love”, it is thrown around and tossed into conversations so that its purer, perfect meaning is diminished by its overuse. Here we will look at what it might mean to live an authentic life.
An Authentic life is one where we live according to the needs of our inner being, rather than the demands of society or our early conditioning. That is not to say that if we are leading a life that accords to societal norms we cannot be leading an authentic life. The critical distinguishing feature is having an understanding and awareness of what is driving our behaviour, rather simply conforming to the received wisdom of society.
Such behaviour may therefore accord with cultural norms, but for the reason that those norms appear on consideration to be appropriate, rather than blindly, simply because they happen to be the current norms. Such authenticity is a positive outcome of examined and informed motivation rather than a negative outcome of rejection of the expectations of others.
Living true to one’s self does not therefore mean we do not consider or take account of others and their expectations. If we accept as human beings we are innately built with a moral compass and an ethical barometer, being true to ourselves will necessarily require being considerate to the interests and feelings of others. There are challenges and difficulties associated with this; it is problematic to really understand what is driving our behaviour; cultural norms or core beliefs.
How do we reconcile being true to our core beliefs when to do so would be upsetting and/or offensive to others?
Andre Gide the 20th century French novelist wrote:
“It is better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not”
“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable”.
Much is written about the need to be authentic in a working environment, legions of books are written on “Authentic Leadership” A quick search on Google will reveal hundreds upon hundreds of such books as well as consultants offering transformational experiential courses and interventions on Authenticity
If we stop for a moment, and start from a different place. Authentic leadership? What do these gurus mean by that? Presumably there is something we should indentify as inauthentic leadership, and authentic leadership would be the opposite of that. Well what would that look like?
If the opposite of a statement is so clearly absurd, the statement itself can hardly be considered to be insightful, or set us on a path of learning or discovery.
So where does that take us, we have a circular definition; the definition of leadership must mean in part to be authentic. Can you be a leader without being authentic? I will seek to demonstrate-No. Well at least you cannot be a leader of people without being authentic.
You can manage, direct, mandate, persuade but you will not lead.
What do leaders do that managers do not? How do we capture that essence? Leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others to action because they deeply understand the invisible forces that shape us all. They have an ability to connect with people, in all dimensions of the human existence, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually they are capable of balancing each of these as the situation dictates, but they are always sensitive to each of these.
Why is this so important? Fundamentally each of us need to be value and appreciated for who we are, and not what we do. We have a basic need to be recognized and appreciated. Psychologists have recognized that for a complete human existence we each need; Recognition, Stimulation and Structure. (There are of course other crucially important things, such as love) Effective leaders have an intuitive understanding of these three needs.
Recognition
To be valued for who we are. So many mangers and organizations make the mistake of valuing people by reference to what they do solely, what their output is. We are not what we produce, what we deliver, that is not the essence of our being, it is part of us and certainly needs to be measured evaluated and recognized. Regrettably too many organizations stop there.
The longer this goes on the more people will define their perceived worth to the organization solely by reference to their output. This is a problem because we all have a deep fundamental need to be appreciated for who we are. If we are spending upwards of 8 hours a day in an environment, which does not pay attention to this deep, need, we cannot make a real connection with the organization, there no sense of affiliation. Our personal characteristics that distinguish us from others are not being seen and appreciated. We become indistinguishable from anyone else who delivers the same output, and so we are not being recognized.
Put another way we have a real need to be seen as and treated as individuals- Leaders have the capability to do this.
This is particularly important when leaders are setting about the business of building a team. Will Schutz observed “ the way I make a group is not to try to make them into a group but to help everyone become more like they want to be”
That requires huge bravery and courage, in a demanding world of short-term targets and performance metrics, where there remains a huge amount of management and decision making to be done. But without this Bravery a group will not be created. There is countless research on high performing teams which all point in the same direction; the whole will only become more than the sum of the parts, if each part is nurtured appropriately so that eventually the parts nurture and develop each other.
A leaders role here is to create the environment for that to happen, She will have chosen the people with the talent and capability, whether they recognize yet themselves.
Stimulation
We all need stimulation, Intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Can a leader provide a work environment, which can deliver on all three dimensions? Is it really the role of employers to deliver this depth? Well let’s ask the question in a different way. All employers want motivated, dedicated and committed employees. They all want to retain their talent. You only need to pick up a business magazine to see how big a deal it is to major corporations. They all spend millions of pounds a year on external consultants a year seeking to address this. So if that is their aim, the question is not “Can a leader deliver on all three dimensions?” The question is “why would she think she can deliver on what she and the company want without doing so?”
Structure
Structure and stability are similarly a basic human need. The need for security, safety and consistency run deep in us all.
This does require subjective judgment. Too much stifles creativity and recognition as mentioned above. Too little will create uncertainly and anxiety for all, irrespective of the level of personal confidence. Without a structure people find it difficult to develop a sense of affiliation.
A leader will need to be hugely flexible in her approach to this. This is not a painting by numbers exercise. It requires subtlety, tact and a massive amount of sensitivity to the situation, the people involved and the issue at hand. All people will need differing levels structure, and all people will require different levels of structure as their personal circumstances change. Individual’s structural requirements change constantly and a leader will need to be sensitive to this, not indulgent of it, but aware of it so as to maximize the contribution of each individual.
A leader therefore needs to understand these three basic individual needs and pay constant attention to them.
So we return to the opening question, why do this require a leader to be authentic? And consequently why is authentic leadership a tautology?
Each of the component parts of RSS will fail if the leader is not telling the truth, or more precisely being true to herself.
Or to put it another way, why is it not possible to fake these things or spin them in a way that makes them seem sincere and genuine? Perhaps it is in the short term, but not in the long term. All of us have the unconscious ability to sense these things; an antenna for inconsistency, genuineness and openness makes us feel comfortable.
“I find you likeable if I like myself in your presence, if you create an atmosphere within which I like myself”-Will Shutz.
Certain people are trained to read body language in real detail and interpret that language. We all have this ability, it is innate in us. We may not have the full language or be able to fully articulate it. But we feel inconsistencies between voice and body, language and tone, facial expressions and spoken word.
We are often shown this on television when politicians are presenting. An expert in the studio interprets the unspoken messages. This rarely surprises us, it is confirmatory of what we already sensed.
So people will feel our lack of authenticity even if they don’t know they do (for more on this see Blink-Malcolm Gladwell and various by Paul Ekman)
And also according to Schutz people will feel our openness and authenticity as we create an environment in which they like themselves.
So, in conclusion people will notice whether we are authentic or not. If we are not it is impossible for them to feel recognized by us for who they are, only for what they do.
We may be able to stimulate them intellectually, but not emotionally or spiritually. I think it is a basic truth that we cannot make meaningful emotional connections with others without being true.
Although a lot of structure may be seen as supportive scaffolding to the overall aim, the fundamentals of knowing how each of us fit in to the aims of the organization is crucial to the capacity to generate affiliation. Similar to recognition, people’s inconsistency antenna will feel this if it is not true
So we now come to what I think is the hard bit. How do we do it?
If we assume that most people in a leadership position don’t deliberately knowingly lie to their people (a reasonable if not totally true assumption)
Why is that we have such a paucity of good leaders?
I think there are a number of interesting factors at play here:
1 Too often leaders tell people what they think they want to hear
2 More interestingly Leaders don’t really deeply know what they believe or what their own values are.
3 There is often a lack of personal values which even if people don’t have the same values, they can at least recognize that the individual is personally consistent.
All of these will undermine authenticity. In summary a great leader will need to have
1 A very high degree of self awareness
2 A clearly understood set of personal values
3 The courage to live by those and the humility to accept that on occasion she will fall below that standard.
4 An ability to create an atmosphere in which people can be who they want to be.
5 Critically and not yet discussed see themselves as serving the people they are leading and not the other way around.
A rarely appreciated part of developing self-awareness is to understand that it involves hearing messages from your body. (Schutz) That is something that very few people have developed to ability to do. Our body is sending these messages all the time, we need to quieten our mind and listen to these messages.
A slight digression: we seem to separate sensory/physical pleasures from cerebral/intellectual pleasures. Treating these as distinct and different, responding to and understood by different parts of us. This separation is artificial and does not properly represent how we truly function. Joy, happiness, sadness and anger are all full human emotions to be felt and understood by our whole being. Who has not on reading a poem (a non physical activity)
been moved to tears or to feel sadness or joy in the pit of their stomach?
There is a whole subject here, which I may write about separately.
Attempting to be someone you are not will eventually lead to misery and possibly worse, it may make you rich financially along the way but it will not bring fulfilment.
This is why a lot of books on Leadership are useless. It is not a skill or competence that can be learnt from a book anymore than you can learn how to love from a book.
We know that love is an emotional state (I shall resist the temptation to write on this subject for fear disappearing down a rabbit hole never to return!); we also understand that it has an intellectual and spiritual element to it to. It is the same with Leadership we know it has an intellectual element but recognize less the emotional and spiritual aspects.
People around you will know, even if you don’t, whether you are being authentic. You may believe what you are saying is a true reflection of what you really believe. But it may not be and so often is not. Our core beliefs are so often obscured from ourselves. Confused by societal norms and expectations, our learned behaviour from our surroundings our peers and mentors. Clichéd definitions abound of great leaders, which we then believe we need to imitate.
So until we have a deep understanding of who we are and what we believe, we are in no position to lead others. So destroy all your leadership books and cancel all your courses on leadership and instead, look inward and discover who you are.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates said that at his trial for heresy.
He was on trial for encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves. The sentence was death but Socrates had the option of suggesting an alternative punishment. He could have chosen life in prison or exile, and would likely have avoided death. But Socrates believed that these alternatives would rob him of the only thing that made life useful: Examining the world around him and discussing how to make the world a better place. Without his “examined life” there was no point in living. So he suggested that Athens reward him for his service to society. The result, of course, is that they had no alternative and were forced to vote for a punishment of death.
Luckily, we don’t have to choose between an examined life and death. But the sad thing is, most people avoid leading an examined life. It’s not that they don’t have time or make time. They actively avoid examining their lives.
Those aspiring to be leaders will need to examine their lives if they are to be successful.
I would suggest that we would all benefit from examining our lives more deeply but that is for another day.
When we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves. Various emotional states are intensified by self-awareness. People are more likely to align their behaviour with their standards when made self-aware. People will be negatively affected if they don’t live up to their personal standards. Various environmental cues and situations can induce awareness of the self, such as mirrors, an audience, or being videotaped or recorded.
It is the inconsistency between behaviour and internal values that causes confusion to other people and also, but not as readily seen, sets up an internal level of stress understood by the body but not always the mind.
So if you are a leader of people, know thy self. If you are being lead, and you don’t believe what you are being told, trust your instincts, you will be right.
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