The Authenticity Debate

A recent article on Chief Learning Officer magazine raised the question of Leaders Gone Wrong; How Authenticity Goes Too Far, in which it reflected

In developing leaders, CLOs should be aware that authenticity, while invaluable, can become an excuse for verbal abuse and laziness. When Steve Jobs died last year, his status as an executive ascended into myth. People from all walks of life began studying the man to determine what made him successful and hopefully learn from it. One of the things praised so widely about him was his authenticity; whether he succeeded or failed in any given venture, he seemingly never compromised himself. But there was a downside to that level of authenticity. Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson has said, “He could be very, very mean to people at times.” Stories are legion of Jobs berating and belittling people with whom he worked.

According to Peggy Klaus, executive coach and author of the book The Hard Truth About Soft Skills, such negative byproducts of authenticity are endemic among executives today and have gotten completely out of hand. "It has become an excuse for bad behavior; for rudeness; for humiliating people,” said Klaus, who calls this the Popeye school of self-management — I am what I am. “I’m going to behave in the way that I think is authentic to me, regardless of whether that is bad behaviour.”

The perspective that 'authentic leadership can be bad leadership', contrasts, however with the view of Marcus Buckingham, who is perhaps best known for his book First Break All The Rules, and who wrote in June's Harvard Business Review that 

If you're a leader, authenticity is your most precious commodity and you'll lose it if you attempt techniques that don't fit your strengths. Nothing scares an employee more than a leader who lurches unpredictably from one technique to the next, sending unclear inconsistent signals.

So how should organisations - and leaders themselves - approach the 'authenticity debate'. FranklinCovey typically considers two aspects to this. The first of these is to make people aware that 'at extremes lie weakness', and that any characteristic which is considered to be a strength can become a weakness if over used or used inappropriately. 

We then offer people a way of approaching this which allows people to demonstrate their authenticity in a 'smart' way, rather than a 'blind' way - being aware of their propensity to be authentic but balancing this with good analysis of when, and how, it is appropriate to use it. In this way, authenticity never becomes an excuse for bad behaviour but rather a means for maximising ones own strengths and the strengths of others.