I have been lucky enough to be a people leader for 15 years now, and as I reflect on the times when I believe I have been successful and where I have fallen short, one thing holds true – it is the times when I have been true and honest with myself that I have been most successful.
I have also been lucky enough to have some great leaders around me throughout my career, all bringing their own styles and personalities. I was and am still always in awe of the leaders who can seemingly step into a room and “wow their audience”. And as such, I used to equate that with good people leadership or even inspirational leadership.
However, after reflection and several engagement surveys, I have found that my teams appreciate me most when I just show up as me. I do not come up with the best ice breakers and I am not the go-to for team building ideas, but I’m present during 1:1s, I prioritize my teams as people first and I strive to create safe spaces. For me, this has created foundations of trust and respect.
It is easy to be an authentic leader when projects are green and KPIs are above goal, but you are tested when things are off track. As people leaders we push our teams, we ask for more, we deliver the performance coaching. All these things are easier to do when you are an authentic leader, and you understand the drivers and limits to your employees. They will trust you are coming to them because it is important, you believe they are part of the solution, and you want them to be successful.
I once stepped into a role during a challenging time for the business and the team members I inherited. We had to solve complex problems in a short timeframe, and we were still getting to know each other. We had to produce a new framework to triage the problem and dig into a lot of data that was new to us. If we were going to be successful, we would have to band together and put in some long hours.
As I kicked off the work with my new team, I didn’t prepare a big speech or search for inspirational words of wisdom, I was candid and direct. I was me. I acknowledged this was going to be hard, ambiguous and require long hours. I made sure they understood that I needed them, and we were in this together. We all, including myself, divided up the work and got started. We met multiple times each day and ran through our findings and we stayed online together until we all completed what was needed. As we neared the completion of the project, I enlisted each of them to present and ensured they had a seat at the table in delivering key business insights.
Those weeks and days were long, and I know I pushed my team very hard early on in our relationship, but I was so proud when I heard each of them volunteer to stay on and help one another out. I like to think this happened because I led authentically through a difficult period and they in turn felt empowered, trusted and motivated.
Authentic leadership can mean a lot of things and there is no one way to be an authentic leader, but I am certain it starts with you.
