A fresh perspective on The Authenticity Paradox

In a thought-provoking Harvard Business Review article, The Authenticity Paradox, Herminia Ibarra argues that having a too simplistic understanding of what authenticity means, can severely hinder your growth and your ability to make an impact as a leader. Yet, ironically, I believe she steps into the same trap of viewing authenticity too narrowly. Here’s why I think so, and how we, on The LEAP Journey, view and approach authenticity.

Ibarra discusses three ways in which authenticity can lead you astray. Firstly, the notion of authenticity leads you astray by creating the idea that you must be “true to yourself”. She asserts that being true to yourself is made difficult by the fact that that there are many dimensions to the self, and that the question then arises as to which self, you must be true. She is right in arguing that the self is made up of different dimensions. The constructed self does in fact consist of various layers. However, there is one specific layer of the self that IS the true self. The deepest and most obscure layer of the constructed self, is the authentic self. This is the part of the self that has endured all through our lives. It encapsulates our core fears and motivations and our reason for being. Not understanding this core reason for being, does make it difficult to navigate life and career, and often leads us astray in itself, because we strive for specific career roles, only to feel unfulfilled when we finally arrive there. This is because we don’t have a clear understanding of what motivates us at the core and why we are embarking on certain experiences in the first place.

Understanding our core fear or reason for being is important for two reasons. Firstly, it helps us understand our own defense mechanisms, which is the first step to developing better self-monitoring and self-regulation (both critical skills for the development of emotional intelligence). Secondly, understanding our core fear, helps us identify in a mature way, what we should learn on our journey of life if we are to break free from the personality habits that are holding us back. This is the beauty of the Enneagram – which is the personality profiling tool that we use on The LEAP Journey. The Enneagram is different from other personality profiling tools. It first helps you understand what your core fear is and how it manifests in certain blind spot and ego defense behaviours. Then it teaches you how to grow out of your type and embrace other aspects or dimensions of your personality, so that you do not have to stay trapped in behavioural patterns that don’t benefit you any longer.

According to Ibarra, the notion of adhering to one true self can lead us astray as it flies in the face of much research on how people evolve with experience. However, being authentic, does not imply an inability to evolve and grow. In fact, real authentic leadership can only be developed by embracing an attitude of learning, unlearning and relearning as we progress through life. The pace of change in our modern world is so fast, that it demands that each of us evolve if we are to survive. This does not mean that we cannot have a core identity or core motivation that cannot evolve with us. The Enneagram personality profile explains how each of us develops a preference for a specific style over time and that the personality style we adopt reflects a deeper core fear or motivation that drives all our behaviour.

If we are not aware of this core fear or motivation, it becomes very difficult to change our behaviour and adapt to the situation, because then all our responses are instinctual, or ego-driven. However, if we are aware of what drives us at the core or what our core fear is, we can start to identify our own blind spots and ego-driven behaviours and choose not to fall back into our habitual patterns of behaviour. The only way to expand our personality type, is to understand in what ways we have access to other personality types and how we can untap those skills within our own personality type. This is what Ibarra alludes to when she suggests learning from different role models and then finding your own unique way of combining the strengths of different role models. There is an easier, and more authentic way of doing this. It is in understanding our own personality type, the fears that drive us, where our strength lies in terms of thinking, feeling and action responses and how we can access the strengths and wisdoms of other personality types.

Secondly, Ibarra postulates that authenticity can lead you astray by insisting that you maintain strict coherence between what you feel and what you say. She argues that you lose credibility and effectiveness as a leader when you disclose everything you think and feel. Again, she is right about full disclosure sometimes leading to loss of credibility. However, the mistake she is making, is in her interpretation of what authenticity means, because being authentic doesn’t mean telling everyone what you really think and feel. Ibarra, calls those who are honest about what they are feeling “true-to-selfers” or “low self-monitors” which basically then implies that authenticity is underdeveloped emotional intelligence. This could not be further from the truth.

Authenticity is not a “take-me-as-I-am” approach to life. Real authentic self-leadership is built on your character, not your style. It has to do with who we are as human beings and the forces that shaped us. Authentic leaders are real and genuine, in the sense that they know what they feel and why they feel it. However, they also possess the emotional intelligence to know when it is appropriate to be open about what they are feeling and when it is better to only be honest with themselves about what they are feeling and not necessarily sharing it with others. Authentic leaders understand that there are times that they must lead people through uncertainty and make firm decisions. However, they can only lead effectively if they possess the emotional intelligence to understand what they are feeling and how their ego defences might derail their efforts. Understanding your own internal space, does not mean that you are unwilling to change that internal space. In fact, it usually means you are ready to change it. How are you supposed to change something you are not aware of?

When it comes to true authentic leadership, you cannot “fake it ‘till you make it” by putting on a show or by being a chameleon in your style. People sense very quickly who is authentic and who is not. Some people may pull it off for a while, but ultimately, they will not gain the trust of their teammates, especially when dealing with difficult situations. Character is shaped through an understanding of who we are and what matters to us and through our values and life experiences. It is not an excuse to remain stuck in our ego drives and blind spots. It is an invitation to understand these ego drives and blind spots so that you can transcend them. You cannot expect the world to accept you just as you are, without taking responsibility for also cultivating your strengths and minimising your weaknesses. That is what real authentic leaders do – they grow and evolve with the situations and environments they find themselves in. They read the emotional cues of others, they also know what is happening in their own internal space, and they find the balance between managing their own emotions and ego defences and those of others.

The third way in which authenticity can lead you astray, according to Ibarra, is by giving you permission to make value-based choices. She states that when we move into new roles, values that were shaped by past experiences, can lead us astray. Again, she is right in saying that clinging to old beliefs or values from past experiences, can lead us astray, but she also demonstrates a too simplistic understanding of values. There are different levels of values. There are values that tell us how to behave – let’s call them experience values. These are the values that Ibarra is talking about. Experience values teach us through our experiences what the right action or behaviour for a specific situation is. These values can change, because the environments and contexts we find ourselves in can and do change.

However, you also get values that tell us what matters to us most – let’s call these guiding values. Guiding values are values that you hold dear as a person. For each person, their guiding values, would be different. Guiding values tell us what matters most to our deepest authentic self. In other words, why do we do what we do? These values are aligned with our core motivations and fears and when you think back over your life and career experiences, you will discover, that these are the values that trigger the strongest emotional responses for you, because when they are violated, a core part of your being retaliates. Guiding values are evergreen, because no matter how much we change and how much our world changes, these values don’t change for us. They will always be important to us. The greatest leaders of our time, always conducted themselves according to a core set of values or principles that guided both their decisions and actions in different situations. Look at leaders like Nelson Mandela, whose guiding values were moral courage, respect, fairness and responsibility; Mahatma Gandhi who lived his entire life according to the principles of non-violence and service to others, while Martin Luther King’s guiding values were courage, justice, freedom and responsibility.

Ibarra also offers three ways to evolve your leadership style. Firstly, she recommends learning from diverse role models. She says that “there is a big difference between imitating someone wholesale and borrowing selectively from various people to create your own collage, which you then modify and improve”. Although it is good advice to find role models that you can learn from, it is very difficult to find the right role models if you do not have a clear sense of who you are and what your weaknesses and blind spots are. Knowing who you are, what drives you at the core and what your biggest obstacles in terms of blind spots and ego defensive behaviours are, help you identify the skills you most need to acquire to grow your specific personality type. Then you can identify role models that possess the skills you know you need to acquire to grow and you can either study what they do or have conversations with them about their thinking and motivation.

We cannot evolve our personality and leadership style without clearly understanding where we are starting from. How will we measure our progress? It is like the before pictures and measurements you take before embarking on a physical transformation like a diet or exercise program. The best way to monitor progress, is to have a clear picture of where you started. It is the same with developing your leadership capability. You first need to understand where you are and what your specific challenges are, because for every individual, the challenges will be different. Then, identifying one area of growth to focus on, will make the goal feel attainable. Once, we have grown a specific aspect of our personality or character, we can identify another aspect we would like to grow. And so, the journey goes. It is a never-ending, continuous process of sharpening the saw (as Stephen Covey would say) and striking the balance between our motivations, actions and desires.

Ibarra’s second suggestion is to work on getting better. She reasons: “Setting goals for learning (not just for performance) helps us experiment with our identities without feeling like impostors, because we don’t expect to get everything right from the start”. This is indeed very good advice. Performance mode, makes us focus on presenting ourselves in the most favourable light and thus pushes us to spend most of our time and energy on developing our perception self; which is the outer-most layer of the constructed self. The perception self, is volatile, because it depends on others’ feedback and it increases our ego concerns and gets us stuck. The only way to become unstuck and to truly grow, is to embrace a learning attitude as Ibarra suggests and to focus on discovering and developing the deeper authentic self and aligning the other layers of the constructed self with this deeper and more authentic self.  We then focus on a desire to grow and optimise our potential, which means we also give ourselves permission to fail, because failing is learning. And the goal is learning for growth, not perfection for prestige or praise. This is a much better space to be in, and allows us to compete with ourselves instead of others, leading us to true authentic leadership, which is the desire to become our best selves.

Thirdly, Ibarra advises that you shouldn’t “stick to ‘your story’”. She says “most of us have personal narratives about defining moments that taught us important lessons. Consciously or not, we allow our stories, and the images of ourselves that they paint, to guide us in new situations. But the stories can become outdated as we grow, so sometimes it’s necessary to alter them dramatically or even to throw them out and start from scratch”. Again, Ibarra hits the nail on the head. Our stories define us and our journey, but our stories should evolve. For this reason, at the LEAP Academy, we believe that your personal narrative should evolve as your journey changes and that it forms a critical part of the process of developing authentic self-leadership.

Again, it is about understanding where you’ve started and having a holistic perspective of the events that have shaped the person you are, but then also formulating a vision of where you want to go, how you want to change, and the person you want to become. As you make progress on becoming the person you want to be, your narrative will change. It has to. And every time you enter a new life or career transition, your story will change. However, you will always start from a place of knowing and understanding first where you are, before your progress becomes clear and measurable. This idea is best encapsulated in the famous quote by T. S. Elliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”, because your journey of self-discovery and personal growth starts with what you already know about yourself, and then expands from there. However, it also always leads back to where you started, but with the personal growth you acquired along the way, you now understand your narrative better and can adjust it to fit the person you are becoming. As you go deeper, you discover what makes you tick and what drives you at the core. These new discoveries then put your current skillset into perspective and helps you rewrite your personal narrative so that it is a true reflection of who you are at the core and who you would like to be.

Ibarra refers to Dan McAdams, a Northwestern psychology professor who has spent his career studying life stories. McAdams describes identity as “the internalized and evolving story that results from a person’s selective appropriation of past, present and future.” McAdams emphasises two critical lessons about identity: you must believe your story, but you should also embrace how it changes over time. It is only when we believe our story, that we can convince others to trust us, because we have a secure sense of self. However, it is our willingness to change our story, that reflects our desire for personal growth and for making an impact. Ibarra suggests editing your story as often as you would your résumé and although I agree with her, I would argue that the change to your story should not be a superficial one, but should rather be focused on telling a story of deep and meaningful change that affects the direction of your life and the impact you have on others.

Ibarra’s final point is that we grow as leaders and as people by stretching the limits of who we are, and that although this might sometimes be uncomfortable, it is what is needed to help us become who we want to become. I do not expect anything less of a true authentic leader. Authentic leaders are constantly growing. They do not have a rigid view of themselves and their leadership. They are not perfect, nor do they try to be. They make mistakes, but they are willing to admit their errors and learn from them. They are willing to embark on a journey of lifelong learning and continuous personal growth and, as Ibarra rightly states, such growth doesn’t require a radical personality makeover. It requires consistent and measured small changes to the way we conduct ourselves. However, any change always starts with knowing where we are and how we currently see ourselves. Real and lasting change always starts with being self-aware first, which is why self-awareness is an important competency that we aim to develop on The LEAP Journey.

References

1. Covey, S. R. (2004). The seven habits of highly effective people. London: Simon & Schuster.
2. Ibarra, H. (2015). The Authenticity Paradox, Harvard Business Review, (January-February 2015). Available online at: https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-authenticity-paradox
3. Kamanthe, A. (2016). Nelson Mandela: Lessons on moral courage. Available online at: http://www.atlascorps.org/blog/nelson-mandela-lessons-on-moral-courage/
4. Luther King Jr., M. (1963). “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in Why We Can’t Wait. New York: New American Library (Harper & Row). https://www.amazon.com/Why-Cant-Wait-Signet-Classics/dp/0451527534
5. Nair, K. (1997). A higher standard of leadership: Lessons from the life of Ghandi. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Khoeler. https://www.amazon.ca/Higher-Standard-Leadership-Lessons-Gandhi/dp/1576750116
6. Schoemaker, P. J. H. & Krupp, S. (2014). 6 principles that made Nelson Mandela a renowned leader. Fortune, December. Available online at: http://fortune.com/2014/12/05/6-principles-that-made-nelson-mandela-a-renowned-leader/