Stop Wasting Your Time on Workplace Spin
The following is an excerpt from Naked at Work: A Leader’s Guide to Fearless Authenticity by Danessa Knaupp.
If you’re presenting a new workplace policy to your team that has terms they might find objectionable, you have two choices. One, you can “hide the fine print” and deal with the fallout later. Or two, you can be open about the details and explain the purpose of the terms from the start.
Which do you choose?
One option breaks trust and costs energy, while the other builds trust and wastes less time. This is because authenticity drives results. Whether it’s funneling qualified candidates into your pipeline, driving revenue to your door, or keeping valued employees, leading authentically and being emotionally honest with your team members is universally more effective than the alternatives.
Being open about your humanity not only inspires better performance from your employees but also wastes fewer resources driving you to your goals. Here’s a look at what it means to lead authentically and how it can save your company time, money, and effort.
The Rewards of Authentic Leadership
Before I became an executive coach, I owned my own Make-It-and-Take-It retail dinner store and experienced the benefits of authentic leadership firsthand.
Truth? It was a miserable failure financially; it included exhausting nights filling orders and long hours staring at financial projections. It debuted just before the economy collapsed. But despite that, it remains one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional career.
I was deeply connected to the purpose of that store. Helping working parents and putting a healthy dinner on the table for a fair price was important to me. I was passionate about that purpose and transparent about it with my team.
I was empowered by the four characteristics of authentic leadership as identified by leadership expert Dr. Fred Walumbwa: self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective.
What did leading authentically look like for me?
I hired a diverse team of energized, enthusiastic people and got to work. I brought my young sons into work and allowed others to do the same. I shared my philosophy of support for harried working parents, supplying both healthy dinners and a fun, social setting in which to prepare them.
While the business ultimately wasn’t a financial success, we had a wonderful company culture, a nearly non-existent turnover rate, and an powerfully effective team dynamic. I attribute that success to my purpose driven, authentic leadership. If I had put on an act, controlled a narrative, or micromanaged (all waste energy) I would have spent far more time managing my team. A closed-off, hierarchical approach to leadership wastes energy.
Driving Better Results
My personal story feels good, but you’re probably wondering if authentic leadership drives financial results. Are authentic leaders actually more effective than their counterparts?
A 2015 study published by Dr. Biplab Datta in the International Journal of Leadership Studies unequivocally says yes.
Dr. Datta surveyed more than three hundred professionals on their experience of authentic leadership, as defined by Dr. Walumbwa’s 2008 study. Authenticity was measured by sixteen questions across the four components of authentic leadership I listed above.
The study concluded that authentic leaders are better than their colleagues across the dimensions of both managerial and leadership effectiveness. Managerial effectiveness is about getting things done, leadership effectiveness is about enabling long-term strategy and inspiring others.
From a managerial perspective, the authentic leaders studied in the experiment drove better performance on key business measures and overall goal attainment. Authentic leaders had fewer issues with negative attitudes and absenteeism and saw higher levels of employee satisfaction.
When we consider leadership effectiveness, authentic leaders drove increased levels of respect and commitment from followers, and an enhanced team ability to solve problems and deal with change.
Getting More for Less
What the case studies and data don’t show, though, is that leading authentically requires less energy than leading with a heavy load of doubt, shame, and other interference. When you are leading from the best and most true version of yourself, you are empowered and engaged. You are not focused on covering up, managing, or preventing shame.
Your work becomes purpose driven — you lose the separation between work and life in the most balanced, healthy way. You are brought together as one full human at work.
When you consider all the benefits of authentic leadership together — better results for less energy — there is no reason not to adopt an open approach.
For more advice on authentic leadership, you can find Naked at Work on Amazon.
Danessa Knaupp is an executive coach, CEO, and keynote speaker shifting the global conversation on leadership. She has coached hundreds of executives across every major industry and has developed a reputation as a candid, compassionate and courageous leadership partner. She is the author of the leadership manual, Naked at Work: A Leader’s Guide to Fearless Authenticity and regularly addresses C-suite audiences on how to harness the power of real authenticity (not #authenticity) to drive measurable business results. Danessa earned her executive coaching credentials from Georgetown University, is credentialed by the International Coach Federation, and holds and a BA in Psychology and Sociology from the College of William and Mary. She spent more than 20 years as an entrepreneur and a senior executive and ultimately, CEO before founding her coaching practice.