When Authentic Leadership Fails

Honesty, transparency, and trustworthiness are all traits great leaders aspire to have. They are also traits that come to mind when you think of authentic leadership. Authentic leadership sounds like something we should all strive for 100% of the time.

Arguing that authentic leadership has weaknesses and may not be the way to go is like speaking out against America, mom and apple pie. Most people would rather work for a leader who is real, in the moment, and genuine than a phony who is hard to read and figure out.

But, what happens when the going gets tough, and your authentic attitude and vision are far from positive and inspiring? Lacking authenticity is the right thing to do when your authentic feelings are not in the best interest of yourself, the team, or the organization.

Here are two examples to help explain the weaknesses of authentic leadership.

18 years ago, my oldest daughter, Brittany, passed away after a two-year wait on a heart transplant list. For those two years, my life was a daily roller coaster. Some days Brittany went to school, and every aspect of my life was normal. On other days, her implanted defibrillator would shock her heart, and 911 or Life Flight had to be called. Although I hadn’t thought much about the possibility of never finding a heart transplant for Brittany, we just ran out of time. On August 17, 1998, God called an Angel to Heaven.

For the next year and a half, there were a lot of tough days for me. Although I had a positive vision of successfully surviving the loss of a child, and a strong purpose to keep my family, company and clients on track, there were a lot of days I didn’t feel like working. Some things that used to be really important to me seemed less important. More than a few times I questioned whether I could keep the company going with the lack of focus I was experiencing. Even worse, there was some days I didn’t care if I kept it going or not. Other days, I had serious questions about how to keep my marriage and family together when everyone experiences grief so differently.

Here was my dilemma with authentic leadership. Truly authentic leadership would have required me to communicate with people daily about the emotional roller coaster I was riding and the lack of focus I was experiencing.

What worked well for me wasn’t authentic leadership. It wasn’t what my family, my company team, or my clients needed or wanted to hear. What did work for me was getting up and asking myself the following four questions every morning:

• What does my family need from me today?
• What does my team need from me?
• What do my clients and their organizations need from me?
• What actions do I need to take to help myself so I can be the leader people want to follow?

Here’s a second example of the weaknesses of authentic leadership from a coaching client.

This manager called to say he needed help. It was a tumultuous time at the company, and he had lost hope that the state of things was going to change. He told me, “At first, it was only the employees who had lost hope. Now I feel the same way they do and I feel like throwing up my hands and telling them I absolutely relate to how they’re feeling.”

When I asked this manager why he had lost hope, he shared the following reasons. The CEO had an affair with his housekeeper and was now going through a costly and distracting divorce. He was numbing his pains by drinking excessively. He rarely showed up at the office, and when he did he applied the seagull theory of management; Fly in quickly, crap all over everyone, and then quickly fly out again. It seemed like nothing this leader did was good enough for the CEO. He wanted to quit and find another job. I can’t blame this manager. I would want to quit, too.

Being honest and telling the employees he agreed with them and saw no hope for the company’s future would have been the authentic thing to do. My advice to this manager was to ask himself two questions to determine whether he should be authentic:

1. What would he, the team, or the company gain by him telling the members of his team how he really feels?
2. What does his team or organization need the most right now from a leader?

When I asked this manager the second question, a light went on. He realized the employees didn’t need yet another person complaining about the CEO, especially another leader. What they needed was someone who could act like a CEO to help improve the situation for the team and the organization.

At our next meeting, this manager wanted to review with me what he and the team had accomplished during the past week, all despite a CEO that seemed to be working against the goals of the organization.

This leader realized that when he was able to put his true feelings aside and focus solely on what was in the best interest of the team and organization, he found the motivation and vision he needed to take action and get things back on track. He felt so much better than he had the week before when he felt hopeless, rudderless and without a plan for what he and the team could do.

Choosing to be less-than-authentic is a useful tactic for the daily challenges of leadership, too. Yes, employees want to work for a genuine leader. But they don’t want to work for a negative leader leading solely with their emotions when times get tough, or a mistake is made. We don’t all have a 100% positive outlook and attitude every single day, but it is still our job as leaders to role-model and create a positive workplace environment. You may be genuinely honest and decide to share your anger over a team member’s mistake or shortcoming. Honesty is great, but in this situation, the employee needs a leader who can give feedback in a way that is helpful and well-received.

I strongly believe that to be an effective leader, you need to be honest. I would never condone lying to anyone. I also strongly believe that your job as a leader is to improve the condition of your team or organization. To improve the condition of your team or organization, 100% authenticity may not always be the way to go.

My dad, who lived to the age of 95 and was married to my mother for 69 years, said it best: There are times when it’s in the best interest of the relationship to think it…just don’t say it. My dad may not have been 100% authentic at those times, but he was always focused on improving the condition of his marriage, his family and his team at work.

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Why do so many leaders fail, and what do the successful leaders do differently?

Thousands of business books tell you how to be a leader. Far fewer books delve into the surprisingly common mistakes many leaders unknowingly make that end up derailing their success. Using real scenarios and examples collected throughout their years of corporate and military leadership and management experience, Peter Stark and Mary Kelly pinpoint why some managers fail and what successful leaders do differently.

Be on the lookout for Why Leaders Fail and the 7 Prescriptions Success, coming April, 2016. Available for pre-order now! http://ow.ly/4n4x1X