There are moments at the start of a career, and sometimes when you are in the middle of one, when you need someone to, frankly, bend the truth. (Photo: iStock) There is so much utter gumph written about leadership that I sometimes despair that anyone can lead any group of people anywhere.
But I think perhaps the biggest load of nonsense we’ve seen in this space (and it’s a particularly crowded field) is the demand that leaders must be “authentic”, that they must be their “authentic selves” in all circumstances.
No less an “authority” on business management than Harvard Business School suggests that whether workers believe their leader is “authentic” is the “strongest predictor of job satisfaction and positively impacts work-related attitudes and happiness”.
It all chimes rather nicely with the rise of social media, and the idea that everyone can do what they want at any time (I realise that I probably sound like a very old man when I say this, but that’s simply not true).
The point is, it’s all bollocks.
In my experience, while I want my boss to be supportive, helpful and to have my back, I don’t know if it would have been good for me for them to have been entirely honest.
There are moments at the start of a career, and sometimes when you are in the middle of one, when you need someone to, frankly, bend the truth. Not just to you, but sometimes for you.
And once you know that a boss can do that for you, you will know they can do that to you as well.
I’m sure that, like me, you’ve had a moment or two, or three or six, or 20 or 30, when you made a mistake. Something that potentially had consequences.
You would have known that you’d done the wrong thing, but if your boss had said to you then and there that you had messed up and did not know what you were doing, it might have been the end of things.
Netflix is full of this, series after series of a young person being told by an older colleague that they are not up to scratch.
In many cases the dramatic tension (such as it is) would have been lost completely if the surgeon/singer/truck driver/newsreader/flower arranger/influencer had done what normally happens, which is to fix the mistake and keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Confidence can be a very fragile thing; it is hard to create and easy to destroy. Being authentic could end many careers before they start.
It’s also true that us ordinary workers can’t really be our “authentic selves” at work either.
Imagine for a moment how utterly useless a blood-hungry stock trader would be if they brought their at-home selves to the office? No share would ever be shorted by someone who was told to be the same person in the office that they are with their five-year-old child.
And one can just imagine what would happen on an airliner were a pilot to take off and then tell passengers “that we’re now cruising at 31,000 feet, the weather at your destination is fine and mild and I had a huge fight with my spouse and they’re taking my kids away from me. I think it’s over”.
The problem though, for leaders and workers, is that if you are not authentic, however you define that, no one is going to trust you.
People can sense someone is lying – just like a politician who claims to be suffering so personally from a water crisis that they have to use a hotel.
But they can also sense when someone genuinely has their best interests at heart. A young person might not really understand what is going on when you tell them, very gently, how to do better next time. When what has really happened is that you’ve had to protect them from your boss, who believes, correctly, that they are crap.
It’s a funny thing, but what I think really builds teams is a leader everyone can trust.
And trust is not necessarily the same as honesty or authenticity.
I can both trust someone to do the right thing, for the team and for me, and know that from time to time they will have to lie to me.
And that when they do, it will often be in my best interest.
Obviously you want your boss to be honest almost all of the time.
But perhaps the most important virtue of being a good boss is to know when you must lie. And how to do it in a way that will not hurt me, or the team around me.
It’s also one of the toughest tests of being an adult, something every parent has to learn; when to lie.
It’s also something that does not appear to be covered that often by Harvard. DM