Inauthentic Leadership

The role of leaders “is not to get other people to follow them but to empower others to lead. They cannot elicit the best performance from their teams if they are in the game primarily for themselves.” So says Bill George in “True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership”, 2007, Jossey-Bass. In exploring authentic leadership, one chapter of the book focuses on identifying inauthenticity in order to adapt and achieve authenticity: “if you’re open, you can learn a lot more from failure than success.” All the inauthentic leadership failures link to a lack of self-development and the author identified five types of leaders who have derailed who appear to be “in it” primarily for themselves…

Here’s a summary of those five archetypes followed by further implications (“et alors”)

Inauthentic Leadership

In losing sight of their “true north”, inauthentic leaders tend to exhibit the following characteristics:

Imposters

Imposters are the “ultimate political animals” who advance as much by eliminating competitors as self-promotion. Because their internal strength is besting internal opponents, once they have achieved a position of power, they are often paranoid that subordinates are trying to oust them.

Rationalisers

Rationalisers always blame external forces or subordinates when things go wrong. On the other hand success is quickly attributed to self. As they progress, they can increase pressure on their subordinates and will never “protect” them when things go wrong.

Glory Seekers

Glory seekers are motivated by money, fame, glory and power. They pursue visible signs of success and it may be more important for them to receive rewards than build long-term relationships. Often “empty” inside, they are driven by insatiable envy.

Loners

Loners are not to be confused with introverts: it is just that they do not listen to feedback even from those who are close to them. They believe they can and must make it on their own. Without an openness to learn, mistakes can make them even more rigid.

Shooting Stars

Shooting Stars are in perpetual motion: they move up so rapidly in their careers that they never have time to learn from their mistakes. If they are around long enough to see the problems that they have created, it increases their urgency to move!

Et alors

Beguiling in their simplicity, these archetypes appear all too easy to recognize: how to avoid or overcome them is the key! As the author states, the key principle is self-awareness: by reviewing the above, if the traits are recognizable because they reflect your own behaviours, then it is time to start making plans to change – to move away from being a “hero solo-performer” to engaging and empowering teammates and subordinates. Beyond self-awareness, the leader must want to change and in so doing must be open to feedback and demonstrate a willingness to learn.

However, what happens if these dysfunctional characteristics become the organisational “norms”? How can a young leader be persuaded to change for the better if those senior in the organization appear to have advanced because they are “imposters”, “rationalisers” or “shooting stars”? By rotating people regularly, “shooting stars” can easily focus on the short-term leaving problems for the next person to fix; what happens if large power distances mean that the people at the top seem to be “rationalisers” and never accountable for failures lower in the organisation?; and in large bureaucratic hierarchies, politics can be a way of life but sometimes it might seem that only “impostors” succeed…

There are potentially two answers to this question. Firstly, even if “normalized”, it is unlikely that such inauthentic leadership will be pervasive throughout the entire organization: for the future, the authentic leaders (of whatever level) therefore need to consistently demonstrate the “true north” to the other leaders. If a certain momentum takes hold, then the remaining inauthentic leaders can be encouraged to develop or they will derail in the improved environment. Secondly, in terms of leadership development, the focus has to be on learning agility. This concept starts with enhanced self-awareness beyond the “self” to an understanding of the impact that the leader’s behavior can have on the organization as a whole. In this respect, learning “emotional intelligence” will help the leader to engage and motivate teams so as to ultimately “elicit the best performance from their teams”!