It would be nice to live in a world where you can just be yourself. And I don’t mean at home, during a family reunion meal, or office Christmas party (is that still a thing?), but in any given situation.
Imagine, for instance, if you were just yourself when your boss asks you to do something tedious, when an interviewer asks you about your biggest weaknesses, or when you go on a first date with someone. Surely your chances of success would be greater than what they are now. Why? Because the actual reality is this: in any important life situation or event, people are not rewarded for behaving in a spontaneous, uninhibited or unfiltered way – but rather, for putting on the right repertoire of behaviours, managing impressions and conforming to the dominant social norms and etiquette.
Research shows that the ability to monitor and adjust your behaviour to adhere to others’ expectations is a consistent predictor of career success and that the most accurate interpretation of what we call social skills or “EQ” (emotional intelligence) is social desirability. You can call it “faking” if you want, but the fact is that those who are better at it are generally deemed more rewarding to deal with, more employable, and more effective as leaders.
It is rather curious that leaders are constantly told to “be true to themselves”, to “just be themselves”, and to “stop worrying about what others think of them”, when in fact most of the critical ingredients that make leaders effective (as I discussed in last year’s Guardian MBA masterclass), require the exact opposite. For example, controlling emotional outbursts, exercising self-control, caring more about others than yourself, making an effort to understand others’ perspectives, and being aware of your reputation in order to harness it, finesse it, curate it.
As I highlight in my latest book, Why do so many incompetent men become leaders (and how to fix it), most of the problems in the world are largely caused by poor leadership, and in the vast majority of cases, the root of the problem is not a lack of authenticity, but an excess of it: leaders who are too ego-centric, self-centred, and entitled to engage in any self-restraint, self-censorship, or considerate behaviours. Indeed, only those who can indulge in a toxic surplus of privilege, status, and abuses of power can afford to not care about what others think of them, and with tragic results - not always for them, but always for others (e.g., Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Bernie Madoff didn’t find the necessary moral or ethical incentives to suppress or repress their authentic selves).
Now onto the good news: it is not just possible, but also feasible, to keep your authentic self in check, without being a fraud, or violating your own core values and beliefs. To be sure, being true to your values isn’t always a good thing either – as we have learned from Mao, Hitler, and Stalin – you have to actually have good values, to begin with. Assuming you do, then there’s no loss (and many gains) if you learn to become more aware of how others perceive you, which is what competent leadership coaching and development interventions do – they enhance self-awareness, which is really other-awareness (awareness of how people see you).
Of course, you need to have a modicum of EQ (not always the case with leaders) in order to become self-aware. This is why coaching interventions rarely work with those who need it the most: if you are really arrogant, entitled, and self-centred – in other words, “just being yourself” – then no feedback, whether from a coach, assessment, AI or your spouse – will be sufficient to help you understand that you are not as good as you think. But if you respond to this feedback, then great: you have taken the first step towards improving. And whatever your self-improvement or leadership development journey looks like, it will usually comprise one big task, namely to learn how to go against your nature.
All great leaders are a work in progress, and the best leaders manage to become an augmented version of themselves. Their identity and self-views (who they are in their own eyes) may not change much, but in the eyes of others, they are more complete, more diverse, and more adaptable, because they have learned to display a much broader range of behaviours, becoming less predictable. Think of them as you think of great actors: Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep stand out from their peers, not because they always play themselves (which is what talentless actors do) but because they can transform themselves into any character. And when they do this, they manage to fool ourselves that they are authentic because they seem really natural and genuine – but this requires a great deal of talent and even more work.
Needless to say, nobody will trust a leader if they seem fake, but what matters in leadership is not whether people are being true to themselves, but whether they are good to others. I’m pretty sure that George W. Bush was true to his values when he decided to invade Iraq. I’m less sure about Tony Blair. But who cares – the result is the same, and we shouldn’t hold one morally superior to the other, but assess what the impact of their actions are. By the same token, we should spend less time discussing leaders’ styles, including whether they are authentic, charismatic, confident, funny, etc., and more time discussing their substance. And while every leader is unique, the substance of leadership talent is universal: can they convince a group of people to collaborate effectively in the pursuit of a positive goal. Typically, this will depend on their competence, integrity, and social skills, which will include the ability to seem authentic, but our best home is that they can keep the uninhibited version of themselves at home. Indeed, the real you is someone who perhaps five people in the world have learned to love, or at least tolerated, and that after a great deal of work.
Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the Chief Talent Scientist at ManpowerGroup, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. He will lead an interactive session on leadership and management at The one-day MBA on Sunday 24 October 2021. Find him on Twitter here.