A few weeks ago, I posted about “Coaching Strong Leaders” and how being vulnerable increase your authenticity as a leader. Unfortunately, if done the wrong way it can backfire and do the opposite of what you intend. I once knew of a leader who encouraged me and others to be more open and sharing and yet he did not demonstrate this at all. This made him come across as a hypocrite and undermined his trust with me and the rest of the team. In this great Harvard Business Review article, “Be Yourself, But Carefully” by Lisa Rosh and Lynn Offerman they call this type of leader a “Social Engineer” and explain that this is one of five different ways leaders that can mess up their ability to lead by not being self aware.
The article is worth the read if you want to learn more how to be a stronger leader, here’s a quick summary of the five step path they outline in the article:
1. Become more self aware. Blind spots and not understanding how your intentions are coming across can undermine any of your actions and decrease trust. Hire a Coach and have them help you do a 360 assessment.
2. Assess the relevance of your sharing to the task you are taking on. If you’re doing it to move a goal forward, great! If you’re doing it for self promotion, stop that!
3. Stick to the facts. It may be tempting to embellish the facts a bit to better fit the situation but this will cause more harm than good.
4. Know your culture. How do people operate in your company culture; observe the level of candor and align appropriately. It is especially important to adjust if in a global context, know if you’re dealing with collective (Japan, China) or individualistic (U.S. Europe) societies
5. Timing is important. If you share too much personal information too soon you’ll come across as awkward or worse yet, needy. “Intimate stories strengthen relationships; they don’t establish them.”
Here’s to programming your internalGPS to be a stronger, more vulnerable and more authentic leader!