Inclusive leadership skills: authenticity
Authenticity is an essential inclusive leadership skill. It builds the trust and psychological safety needed for collaboration, innovation and impact. It’s one of the things that people need to do their best and most fulfilling work in alignment with the mission of their organization.
But if authenticity is defined as being true to oneself, how can you measure authenticity, particularly in the context of the workplace?
Because how can you tell if someone is being true to themselves without claiming to know, perhaps better than they themselves, what their true self is?
What we’ve found in our work is that what people are often looking for when they are looking for authenticity is consistency and transparency.
Consistency in different contexts
A leader who shows up differently depending on who is in the room can often be a leader who comes across as inauthentic.
Yes, leaders need to be responsive to the situation, and code-switching can certainly be necessary and appropriate (I’m not going to show up to a five year old’s birthday party the same way I show up to a Board meeting, for example).
Many of us who have identities that are othered, and who have adopted people pleasing and assimilation as a coping mechanism to try to buy safety can struggle with this.
But people don’t want to have to feel like they never know which version of you is going to show up. There needs to be a baseline of values, principles, beliefs and commitments that people can trust.
Consistency over time
The same is true over time. Yes people change and evolve, but sharing those changes transparently so people can track them is important in maintaining trust. If you show up differently over time without connecting the dots and acknowledging your journey, you risk showing up as inauthentic.
Consistency between values, intentions, actions and impact
Lip service isn’t just about saying something you don’t mean. We’ve found that leaders might well mean what they say, but fall short on following up those intentions with actions, nor do they measure to see if their impact is alignment with their intentions. And sometimes that can make it feel that intentions aren’t in alignment with stated values.
It’s not enough to mean well. Feedback loops are critical.
Transparency
This leads to transparency. Authenticity can be conveyed through transparency, whether that is “showing your work” and being explicit about values, intentions, actions and impact, or sharing thoughts, feelings, ideas, perspectives, failures and lessons learned, as well as being open to giving and receiving feedback. Transparency is also about communication and information sharing as well as self-reflection.
Safety
It’s hard to be authentic when you don’t feel safe. However, being less authentic can also compromise safety and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why being able to create at least some degree of safety for yourself is also an essential leadership skill.
This is not to blame those, often with marginalized identities, who have very real reasons to feel less than safe in the workplace… but as leaders we have a shared responsibility for safety for ourselves and others.
We all deserve at least some degree of safety in the workplace - it’s hard to be authentic otherwise, which makes it hard for us to do our best and most impactful work.
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