Being Genuine
In his now classic 1990 work, Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work, psychologist William Kahn made the case that three psychological conditions—when present—encouraged individuals to fully engage at work.
These psychological conditions were:
Meaningfulness: How meaningful is it for me to bring myself into this performance?
Safety: How safe is it to do so?
Availability: How available am I to do so?
In the ensuring years, psychological safety has come to be applied by many as a corporate culture in which individuals feel comfortable displaying their genuine self at work. This has led me to create a two-part definition of what it means to be a genuine leader:
1. Being true to your own self in how you communicate and act at work.
2. Creating the conditions that not only allow, but also encourage, your employees to do the same.
Back in 1990, we were still communicating via fax machines and written memos. Today, we use social media and smartphones. This shift has encouraged many to “curate” the opposite of a genuine self. Our business world is filled with “influencers” who create a perceived standard that is nearly impossible to maintain in reality, even for the influencers themselves.
To be a leader who is true to his or her own self—and to encourage others to do the same—requires a commitment to be genuine that extends from social media to personal interactions to performance measurement and compensation and finally to corporate culture itself.
This implies that being genuine is more important than any specific set of desired behaviors. As Wharton researcher Julianna Pillemer writes, “There may be clear organizational expectations for desired behaviors, and there’s a potential downside to acting in a way that’s actually genuine.”
Pillemer cites a consultant friend who perfectly encapsulated this challenge by saying, “Now not only do I have to deliver a perfectly polished presentation, but then go out for drinks with the client, seem like a really fun, genuine person, and tell them all about my life.”
The way out of this perceived trap revolves around a single word: to be genuine rather than to seem genuine.
It means being honest about your flaws as well as your strengths.
It means asking for help instead of simply trying to be the smartest person in the room.
For leaders, it means rewarding honesty and credibility rather than adherence to what a leader wants to hear.
In 2003, Bill George wrote Authentic Leadership. At the time, he defined authentic leaders as being genuine, moral and character-based. Writing in 2015 for Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge, he looked back and observed, “If you want to be an authentic leader and have a meaningful life, you need to do the difficult inner work to develop yourself, have a strong moral compass based on your beliefs and values, and work on problems that matter to you. When you look back on your life it may not be perfect, but it will be authentically yours.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I like to take this one step further: one of the best ways to “do the difficult inner work to develop yourself” is to use social media in a genuine manner. No other outlet enables leaders to provide a window into their thoughts, experiences, perceptions and development.
Social media, used properly, allows a leader to model what it means to be genuine. “Properly” means sharing the good as well as the bad, embarrassing moments as well as those that make you proud, and what keeps you up at night as well as your latest insight.
One last footnote… I find it especially interesting that what William Kahn wrote three decades ago so closely parallels what millennials seem to desire today: work that has purpose, is true to their actual selves, and that fits the lives they want to have.
It is so very tiring and draining to appear to be something that we are not. Being genuine is a brilliant career strategy not only because it cuts to the heart of how most of us would love to live, but also because it allows us to bring so much more energy and passion to our daily lives.