Authenticity Theatre

00:00:13: Hello, and welcome to this episode.

00:00:16: Today we're closing season one of the New Work Playbook.

00:00:21: Let us picture two very different bosses.

00:00:24: Think of first as a genuine leader How he moves through world and handles his responsibility.

00:00:31: Considered is kind of leader you would want follow or aim.

00:00:34: be yourself.

00:00:36: Now picture second one.

00:00:38: He's just as genuine.

00:00:40: What do see?

00:00:40: Is what get?

00:00:42: But it's the kind of manager that people refer to as a bad boss, The kind they try to escape from.

00:00:48: Just picture the two-form moment!

00:00:51: I call this episode Authenticity Theatre because thats exactly what we mostly get to watch on stage.

00:00:58: That i deliberately called management and not leadership.

00:01:02: but before I explain let me take you through the theatre.

00:01:05: We're in audience waiting for our two imagined bosses To enter the stage.

00:01:11: The authentic leader you consider worth following stands at the right wing.

00:01:40: And confidence matters, even when you're not sure of something.

00:01:43: Don't let them see it!

00:01:45: Say it with certainty.

00:01:46: Hesitation in your position reads as

00:01:49: weakness.".

00:01:50: Don't spend too much time on your team.

00:01:52: Spend more with the people who matter.

00:01:55: Build The Right Network.

00:01:56: That's how to make a career.

00:01:58: Keep the focus on results.

00:02:01: Results are what gets measured Not How Your People Felt While They Produced Them One More Thing.

00:02:07: Don't Tell Them Too Much.

00:02:09: The more they know, the more there is to be used against you.

00:02:13: And now the script for the authentic jerk.

00:02:39: Talk about people and values, say that you care.

00:02:43: Give them someone they can relate to a bit more.

00:02:46: You don't have to mean it Just sell It.

00:02:50: Now tell me what's the kind of performance That your expecting To see?

00:02:54: I think most Of us Have experienced something similar.

00:02:58: The authentic jerk gets polished.

00:03:00: Until he passes for manager The organization Can defend And use.

00:03:07: He's shaped into a version which the company allows when strong leadership culture isn't deliberately built.

00:03:14: We pictured two very different but authentic managers, only one of them is true leader!

00:03:21: Both got handed scripts by their environment that put masks on faces and under bright spotlight.

00:03:28: from distance they might almost look same...almost In less constrained moments The mask comes off again.

00:03:38: And the people closest to them get a glimpse of the real person.

00:03:42: in moments of stress when the stakes are high and the jerks polish slips, When the performed empathy and care are gone and the values they praised become thin air?

00:03:54: And when pressure eases on the conforming leader ,when They hold more power To shape the organization .They can show Again that their in this role.

00:04:04: So most of what we're seeing can be called constrained authenticity or performance.

00:04:11: And the question that follows is, how did we end up with such performances when authentic leadership as a concept has been around for over sixty years?

00:04:22: When it has roots in ancient Greek philosophy?

00:04:26: For years I asked myself this question and i discovered quite confusion on various ideas and developments.

00:04:33: With this episode, I want to give you just a little bit of the story behind it.

00:04:38: You will get a different perspective on authentic leadership as something we build in relation with others and not something that we find by searching inside ourselves.

00:04:48: But don't worry!

00:04:49: This is no history lesson for authenticity – this is about real authentic leadership And i won't take much further back into time than necessary.

00:04:59: Let me start by showing you when the idea of authenticity and leadership took a wrong turn.

00:05:06: The important moment lies in the wake of corporate scandals like Enron, In the early two thousands.

00:05:12: it was a crisis of trust.

00:05:14: some Of the largest companies in the world were brought down By leaders who lied to enforce cultures that put performance above everything And everyone.

00:05:24: managers Who built fraudulent systems?

00:05:26: who enriched themselves while the people who trusted them lost their jobs, savings and pensions.

00:05:33: And the questions that got asked absolutely mattered.

00:05:36: how do we put integrity ethics and morality back into leadership?

00:05:41: How do we make sure The People at the top are Who they say They Are?

00:05:46: Out of That moment authentic Leadership became one Of the biggest ideas in Modern Leadership Development!

00:05:53: The fields set out to Put Integrity Back Into Leadership.

00:05:56: What they wanted was genuine leaders.

00:05:59: And, They turned to humanistic and positive psychology which in its focus is the study of the individual self-the self actualized person.

00:06:09: this gave them authenticity as a description for a genuine person.

00:06:14: but at that time authenticity already carried the influence over highly individualised western culture A culture that has spent decades teaching us, That authenticity means looking inward.

00:06:27: And that focus Has done something to the word.

00:06:30: It merged authenticity with individuality more and more As if being authentic simply meant Being as much ourselves as possible.

00:06:41: Just sit With The following question for a moment How do we develop our genuine self?

00:06:49: When we look at this inward focus, it reads as if our true self is something innate.

00:06:54: Something hidden in our inner world that we need to discover.

00:06:58: It feels like its independent of the world around us and can only be uncovered by focusing on what's inside.

00:07:07: But thats not what builds authenticity Not even for individuals.

00:07:12: We don't become ourselves an isolation.

00:07:16: Humans develop through social connection.

00:07:18: Who we are is shaped in relation to and with other people, through those who raised and taught us.

00:07:25: The ones that were looked up at or avoided… And the People who cared about Us – Or didn't!

00:07:31: We got also shaped by the culture we grew-up In With its beliefs, values, language...and rituals That all part of it.

00:07:40: So even personal authenticity Is built in connection with outside world.

00:07:46: That's why the inward, individualistic reading of authenticity is a distortion.

00:07:51: And I consider it problematic in many areas.

00:07:54: but leadership is where i see this focus creating the biggest problems because Leadership Is A Responsibility Where The Relationship With Others Isn't Optional.

00:08:05: Think Of Someone You Know Whose Reference Point Is Mostly Themselves.

00:08:10: Keep In Mind I'm Not Talking About Introverts and Extroverts Here.

00:08:15: Self-referential authenticity has nothing to do with whether someone is introverted or not.

00:08:21: Some of the most charismatic, outgoing people have themselves as their only real reference point.

00:08:28: What I'm describing is the direction in which someones attention points and the person i am asking you picture points it mostly at themselves As a way being.

00:08:39: there's nothing wrong that for private persons its mostly no problem.

00:08:44: If anything, it looks like freedom.

00:08:47: Someone totally free from what others expect and truly themselves.

00:08:52: This is the whole fine-and-bring.

00:08:54: your true self movement has been aiming for.

00:08:57: But What happens when we give such a person or team people they are responsible For?

00:09:03: this makes an important difference.

00:09:05: A Person can live with Themselves as their main focus And be fully authentic.

00:09:13: Leadership is not a way of being ourselves.

00:09:16: It's the responsibility towards people, it only exists in connection with the people you lead.

00:09:23: What surprised me most was what researchers eventually measured.

00:09:27: The authentic leadership questionnaire comes into two forms One where leaders rate themselves and one where others rate leader.

00:09:36: So the field that asked leaders to turn inward and discover their authenticity ended up measuring it through both the leader's view of themselves and what others saw.

00:09:47: And when those pictures don't match, we're back in the theater!

00:09:51: Other academic fields definitely looked at leadership through the lens that people led – research on what people expect from a leader how they actually experience and judge them goes back to the nineteen eighties.

00:10:03: but somehow modern authentic leadership movement stayed focused self-awareness & inner discovery And what leaders got primarily trained on was that side.

00:10:14: Find your true self, discover you're true north.

00:10:17: bring yourself to work.

00:10:19: This focus went into books shaped keynotes leadership development and coaching.

00:10:25: Now don't get me wrong Self-awareness clearly matters.

00:10:28: A leader has know who they are but knowing ourselves is the starting point.

00:10:33: Great leaders not just in tune with themselves They equally well attuned to others in particular to the ones they lead.

00:10:42: So authentic leadership needs others, it needs observers—the people who experience a manager as a genuine leader which clearly isn't a boss whose just an authentic jerk!

00:10:54: You see both of them exist – The Authentic Leader and The Authented Jerk.

00:10:59: What modern inward-focused development overlooked when it comes to leadership.

00:11:04: being in tune with outer world matters if not even more.

00:11:10: And maybe the next part explains why this relational part was left aside, because the incomplete concept of authentic leadership is just one part of what produced The Authenticity Theatre.

00:11:23: What we're seeing on stage got mostly shaped by what companies reward and allow for.

00:11:29: We all know that there are many organizations with great leadership Great cultures and remarkable performance But let's be honest There are just as many that haven't been built by great leadership and cultures.

00:11:42: And in twenty-twenty six, it doesn't look like the trust crisis got solved.

00:11:47: Employee engagement surveys are rather pointing in opposite direction.

00:11:52: You may remember I mentioned the Gardner survey from last year showing only forty eight percent of employees trusted senior leaders.

00:12:02: Considering that trust in leaders is the proxy most often used to measure authentic leadership, I'd say we haven't come very far.

00:12:11: In The last twenty years despite their authenticity hype and billions invested into leadership development.

00:12:18: And there's less to do with a concept of Authentic Leadership an more with the companies themselves.

00:12:24: It's clearly not that We don't know by now what great leadership looks like.

00:12:28: Leadership and organizational research alongside practitioner voices has produced substantial knowledge.

00:12:36: And we have plenty of proof that putting it into practice serves both employees, companies.

00:12:43: but remember our authentic leader in the script he was handed before walking on to stage?

00:12:49: The Stage is a workplace where you can be really good leaders.

00:12:56: that was shaped by very different managers and you don't happen to be the new CEO, You will be handed a script.

00:13:03: And independent of where you stand with your own true self Your values Your leadership capabilities There is a pull towards conformity.

00:13:13: Just like you don t develop in isolation... ...you also do not lead an isolation….

00:13:18: …and YOU & YOUR TEAM are part of the company AND its culture.

00:13:23: Of course you can resist this pull to conform depending on how much power you hold and how easy it is for you to accept friction.

00:13:31: There are many great leaders who managed to reshape entire organizations, even with jerks as bosses but they were working from solid ground.

00:13:41: They had the power track records of successes!

00:13:45: They trained others to be leaders And they were experienced in navigating a highly ambiguous leadership culture an organization.

00:13:53: Many leaders struggle with this.

00:13:55: They feel the pull of environment, political games and pressure to fit in.

00:14:02: The reliance on others.

00:14:04: How can you be a genuine leader when true leadership is not being asked?

00:14:09: And how do you navigate an environment that lets polished or authentic jerks thrive because they still bring results?

00:14:17: You see most organizations aren't built on clear leadership principles and values.

00:14:23: Company cultures evolve through the principles, values and behavior that the top models allows and rewards.

00:14:32: And for anyone joining this means do the work within our constraints – within our norms and culture–and produce the results we require the way we want.

00:14:44: Conformity with these constraints is not an individual flaw.

00:14:48: it's an organizational failure And the bad bosses we're talking about are not just rare exceptions in a sea of great leaders.

00:14:57: This is something that has been studied across industries and countries for decades.

00:15:02: A meaningful share of bosses Are The Polished & Authentic Jerks?

00:15:07: They influence how other managers below them act.

00:15:11: Toxic cultures emerge from such bosses Robert Sutton, organizational psychologist and professor at Stanford has spent decades researching with such bosses due to the people working under them.

00:15:26: He described what these leaders actually cost an organization, and his bottom line is that even top performers are more trouble than they're worth when the cost is fully counted.

00:15:38: So why do these people survive?

00:15:41: Unfortunately many companies never look at this costs.

00:15:45: They see obvious results but damage isn't measured or gets overlooked on purpose.

00:15:51: Throughout the first season, I've given several more references that underline the cost of bad leadership.

00:15:59: A company culture is shaped by the bosses at the top.

00:16:03: If That Culture Is Not Built On What Great Leadership Looks Like It's Very Unlikely To Produce More Genuine Leaders.

00:16:11: So The Question Is How Can We Be Good Leaders Under These Influences?

00:16:18: that these constraints are workplace reality.

00:16:22: If we were living in an era of great leadership everywhere, this podcast wouldn't exist!

00:16:28: The jerks out there – they're everywhere.

00:16:31: Second I would argue good leadership needs continuous practice and learning.

00:16:36: So any leadership concept that promises you done once finished a program is lying.

00:16:46: already tells you that there is no finish line for learning, especially not in leadership and certainly not with AI entering the stage two.

00:16:56: And a third point I want to make specifically on this episode is that leadership always will be responsibility towards other people.

00:17:05: if motivation takes manager position doesn't come with acceptance of that responsibility.

00:17:12: such managers have hard time becoming good leader.

00:17:16: Authentic leadership is also not a state that we reach.

00:17:19: It shows through what we practice consistently in tune with ourselves and the world around us, And this where I would like to come back to previous episodes of this season.

00:17:30: If you've tuned-in regularly You know each topic is carried by main and reflection episode.

00:17:37: The last six weeks cover topics That are foundational for good leadership.

00:17:42: Taken together these leadership practices help you develop authentic leadership.

00:17:48: Each practice also holds against the forces I mentioned today.

00:17:53: Let's take a short walk through this season together.

00:17:56: In the episode We Are Losing Respect, we looked at difference between selective and grounded respect.

00:18:02: Grounded respect is true value.

00:18:05: Selective respect is performance.

00:18:07: The difference is that first is independent of whether know person in front or whether they can do anything for you.

00:18:16: Great leaders don't use respect as a social strategy, and employees are watching this – They see how we treat others… And whether it's genuine... Or performance!

00:18:26: With grounded respect We resist the pull of granting it only to those we deem worthy.

00:18:33: This connects directly with the next episode The Power Paradox Because power and status Are key influences that let us lose respect for others if it isn't a value we live by.

00:18:45: But the power paradox itself has one of the biggest effects on leaders.

00:18:50: The paradox is, people tend to rise through the kind of qualities we want our leader hold but powers corrupting nature leads to selfishness less ethical behavior exploitation of status and other careless actions.

00:19:05: And this significant portion.

00:19:06: managers reach for positions of power not with the intention to lead, but with primary motivation –to use it for their own advancement.

00:19:16: So Motivation and the corrupting nature of Power both have a negative pull on good leaders.

00:19:22: And handling power-with-care in awareness is what closes the door to these influences.

00:19:28: With the following episode The Confidence Trap I introduced Adam Grant's pairing.

00:19:35: Most people consider them opposites when they actually live in balance, in a true leader.

00:19:40: Confidence is the trust and our capabilities.

00:19:43: Humility is knowing we are human that we have blind spots... ...and that we don't know what we do not know.

00:19:50: Practicing confident humility resists the pull to become overconfident.. ..and perform certainty as shield against our own fallibility.

00:20:00: It keeps leaders connected with reality open for learning which links to the following episode about curiosity.

00:20:07: In The End of Why, we looked at the importance of Curiosity for continuous learning development and innovation And the ability really see other people.

00:20:19: Curiosity not only helps us avoid becoming blind our own weaknesses.

00:20:25: It also lets us see capabilities & strengths others Which is essential leading them well.

00:20:31: The willingness to learn keeps us in tune with the world.

00:20:35: It holds against a pool of performing certainty and confidence And this also impacts whether people trust us In Trust, the Broken Spine I address that we haven't moved out off the trust crisis.

00:20:48: We explored Self-Trust as foundation for Confidence and others putting trust into us.

00:20:55: Self-trust is based on self awareness.

00:20:58: it's what you get when act online with our inner compass.

00:21:02: And others.

00:21:03: trusting us is the reflection of it in our relationship with them, which is why we can look at trust as a proxy when we want to evaluate authenticity in a

00:21:14: leader.".

00:21:15: So walk-the-talk Is The Trust Earning Practice That Holds Against The Forces that Can Make Us Look Like A Performer Instead Of An Authentic Leader.

00:21:25: It also keeps us from bending or abandoning our values and commitments under pressure.

00:21:31: And as mentioned at the end of this episode, trust & care go hand in hand!

00:21:37: With the following episode Daring to Care I explain the difference between empathy AND care.

00:21:43: Empathy only gives an understanding what another person is going through.

00:21:48: CARE IS WHAT MOVES US TO ACT ON IT.

00:21:51: A leader who doesn't genuinely care will eventually reach for performance, performed warmth and talks about people in values.

00:22:00: Some may even go further and use empathy as a manipulative tool.

00:22:05: Great leaders care about people They know that it cannot be performed And they resist the pull to care less especially when it costs them something.

00:22:21: Conformity and performance for the sake of their own positioning is not how they act.

00:22:27: Those leaders care enough to take a stand for authentic leadership, They are ones who make a difference and reshape organizations from within.

00:22:36: And yes!

00:22:37: Individual leaders practicing all this inside an organization that pulls the other way Are swimming against current which is why these practices are also what an organization has to build into its leadership culture.

00:22:52: It's what makes all it values and cultural statements true!

00:22:57: So I really hope that i was able show you, genuine authentic leadership isn't achieved by focusing on self-awareness but practicing what leadership is a responsibility towards people complex challenging role with all kinds of forces pulling you in different directions.

00:23:17: It's certainly not an easy job, but it can be highly rewarding when you see the results of great leadership.

00:23:23: What I have given with first season is a starting point Like i said its journey to continuous learning and practice.

00:23:32: No one gets there same way within time or challenges And even those who are called great leaders know that their successes are the achievement of The Great People they happen to lead.

00:23:46: They know, there no great leaders without great people who follow

00:23:50: them.".

00:23:52: And this brings us at the end of Season One.

00:23:55: I will return on the second of June with a starting topic for season two Psychological Safety.

00:24:02: If you don't want miss it hit the subscribe button Connect With Me and share your thoughts questions & challenges.

00:24:10: And if you enjoy my work, please leave a review.

00:24:13: Meanwhile stay curious!

00:24:15: Stay tuned.

00:24:16: Thanks for tuning in to the New Work Playbook where works gets better because people matter.