Authentic Leadership: The Practical Side

Part Two of Two

This post is my second rumination on authentic leadership in startups. Earlier, I wrote about the evolution of the CEO as a leader, and how transparency and authenticity are now permanent parts of a leader’s professional toolkit. (Read Part One here)

One question remains: How do you become an authentic leader?

Over the holidays I posed this question to friends who are founders, CEOs, and investors and, over a lot of bourbon, got some answers.

The consensus: Authenticity is an organic thing. While there are strategies and improvements available to make authentic leaders even more so, authenticity can’t be manufactured.

CEOs or ELT leaders who are guarded or secretive about the state of their companies or lives are not likely to shed this protective skin. However, change is possible for CEOs who seek education, mentoring, or coaching to open up.

In my conversations with CEOs, an interesting question often arose: Can VCs or investors be authentic leaders?

The answer is an enthusiastic “yes,” but with a caveat: Partner politics and LP pressures provide little incentive for VC authenticity. In fact, in the VC community, admitting to vulnerabilities is still, mostly seen as a weakness.

VCs also run into trouble when advice and counsel is forced on them, inauthentic and, worse, based on lies related to operational experience.

We might ask a follow-up question: Must authenticity be displayed in both private and public interactions to be considered genuine? I don’t have an answer to that just yet. I need some time to think about it.

(Isn’t that authentic?)

So where do leaders start in order to make this change? There are five necessary points of personal, business, and interactive reflection needed in order to set yourself on a path to authentic leadership:

1. Make a personal commitment. Authenticity starts from inside. It’s visceral, arising from the heart and the head. Assemble your “authenticity aim(s)” – those goals and attributes you want to realize in authenticity.

2. Check your ego at the door. Many CEOs and members of the ELT overestimate their communications acumen, presentation skills, and other capabilities, partly because they do not get objective feedback. To be regarded as an authentic leader and receptive to feedback (see #3 below), it’s important to be consistently and genuinely humble, and dismantle any sense of egoism connected to your office.

3. Get some help and feedback. Like a golf swing, in order to realize your authenticity aim(s) you need others to see you practice. Also, get on-going feedback, especially from people other than friends. Executive coaches can help.

4. Address the Elephant in the Room. Authentic CEOs initiate revelations by expressly acknowledging the history of vulnerability and the threats involved. Adjusting the aperture – i.e., the message – depends on the audience. A town hall meeting with employees is a very different forum than a customer advisory council. Say the following, it might help: “I want to depart from my usual practice of being circumspect about our business performance. Today I would like to dive deeper into the whys and wherefores of our quarterly performance.”

5. Stop Spinning. PR professionals’ spin or hyperbole can be helpful. But startup leaders who repeat press releases verbatim, for example, damage their credibility and fall short of their authenticity aim(s). Authentic leaders own mistakes and misses, provide deeper insight into circumstances, apologize, and outline course corrections.

Watching the recent World Cup showed me that Lionel Messi approaches penalty kicks with openness and a certain vulnerability. Just prior to kicking the ball, he stutter-steps. This induces the goalie to commit one way or the other, after which Messi kicks the ball the opposite way. This takes audacity: He’s willing to stand before the world completely exposed.

Having the courage to be vulnerable invites others to be vulnerable as well. There is a massive positive network effect. It works for Tim Cook, Lionel Messi and other great leaders. There is no reason it cannot work for you, too.

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