The kaleidoscope of authenticity

I have always believed that your greatest weakness is likely to be the shadow side of your greatest strength. For me, and for many of those I have discussed this with over the years, these two apparent opposites can also be seen as two sides of the same coin.

To illustrate, one of my greatest strengths is that I make things happen. I may not be the originator of an idea, but if I am excited by it, I am the person who can help you turn it into reality. And I do that at pace. This has served me really well in leadership roles as I welcome ideas from others and work collaboratively to realise them.

I frequently reconnect with people I have line-managed in the past, and it is no surprise to me that the most memorable thing about me is my efficiency. The most common piece of feedback I get is that I was the boss people remember for sending really clear notes of every meeting, really promptly – sometimes before they had even got back to their desk.

I recognise and celebrate my pace as a huge strength, that has served me (and hopefully those I worked with) well. But it has a shadow side too. My desire and ability to turn ideas into reality can mean I spend less time reflecting before acting. Often this is balanced by the fact that I am extroverted so tend to collaborate and seek input from others naturally, which slows me down and balances me out.

But there is no doubt that the pace I work at can leave people struggling to keep up. I can also exhaust myself, burning out or becoming unwell when things get most challenging because dropping my pace is so difficult for me. This is far from ideal in a leader. A key part of my own leadership journey has been embracing this weakness as the shadow side to the strengths I am proud of.

Earlier this year I was privileged to take part in an expedition organised by Women Emerging – a global charity that works to reframe leadership so that more women choose to lead. Using the map, exercises and guides that Women Emerging provides, I spent several weeks reflecting on how my strengths, weaknesses and values have all shaped my leadership.

One exercise I found particularly useful examined the apparently contradictory aspects of my personality. I reflected on what it means for me to be inclusive yet decisive and on what it means to be open as a leader whilst also maintaining boundaries. As I said above, reflection is rare for me and so the experience was profound. It lead to me to reflect more broadly on what authentic leadership looks like for me.

I have always sought to be authentic in my leadership. Authenticity, I believe, creates connection and can build trust and empathy. But it also has a shadow side – it creates vulnerability. This is something I have been slow to recognise as a leader and often failed to protect myself against. It’s a truth we perhaps don’t want to acknowledge, but bringing ‘your whole self to work’ can be risky.

Several of my managers in the past had tried to warn me about this but I dismissed them as lacking integrity. It has taken me a long time to learn that acting with integrity is not always enough to keep you safe.

I recall one of the first female CEOs I worked for advising me that, if I wanted to succeed in high level philanthropy, I should really consider getting hair and lash extensions or at least investing in a better mascara. To be clear – I still think this is terrible advice. It is one of the main reasons I left that role and that organisation. I never want to have pretend to be someone I am not to succeed.

However, decades later, I am finally able to take a more empathetic view.

Later in my career, I took a role in which I hoped my personal lived experience would be as valuable to me as my professional expertise. I was excited to bring my whole self to work and hoped it would be transformational for me and for the charity.

By the time I realised how much harm it was doing me to repeatedly relive traumatic past experiences, it was already too late. I was authentic, and I poured my full self into work, and it left me vulnerable and exposed. As I work at pace, the burnout crept up on me before I had even recognised the risk.

I think back now to the CEO who gave such terrible advice to a younger me and wonder to what extent she was speaking from her own lived experience (her hair and makeup were always immaculate) and advising me to create a mask for myself – as much to protect myself as to succeed.

I have had other terrible advice from people who see wearing masks and playing roles as a necessary, even enjoyable, part of office politics. A Trustee once bought me Machiavelli’s The Prince to encourage me to be more cunning in my handling of my senior team – I rejected it as roundly as I rejected the false eyelashes. Another, more recently, suggested I needed to behave differently if I wanted to be allowed to sit at ‘the top table’, failing entirely to realise that my whole goal was to build a table big enough to seat everyone.

I still reject bad advice, and refuse to compromise my values, but I have come to recognise that being my authentic self, and leading with integrity, does not mean I have to make my whole self available to everyone all the time. Nor does it mean I have to hold myself resolutely to a single, perfect ideal of leadership. The contradictions within me – and within most, if not all, others – are not hypocrisy but complexity.

As a leader, I strive now for my values to create not a single bright beam of light but a kaleidoscope of colours, with shadows and contrasts an integral part of the whole. The positive and negative of my past experiences, and the strengths and weaknesses that make me uniquely me are all part of who I am and how I lead. This recognition will, I hope, help me to lead with more empathy – towards myself as well as towards others.

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