Courageous Authenticity
You can tell a lot about any Coach or OD practitioner by the tools they use. If there is a polar opposite from the summary assessments that purport to provide an in-depth personality “type” based on filling out a short form—The Leadership Circle would be it. This month, I want to dive into the most influential capacities for leadership as defined by the LCP- Integrity and Courageous Authenticity.
Together, these two capacities make up a dimension that the instrument labels as “Authenticity.” The interpretive manual for the 360 describes ‘Authenticiy” this way:
It measures the extent to which your leadership is an expression of your true self— not masked by organizational politics, looking good, winning approval, etc. It also measures your ability to take tough stands, bring up the “un-discussables,” openly deal with relationship problems, and share personal feelings/vulnerabilities about a situation.”
If this sounds like “soft stuff” to you, I have some really bad news for you. Leaders who score low on this dimension are described as:
Articulating unrealistic or unachievable goals
Caught up in internal politics
Unwilling to own errors and mistakes
Make agreements that they cannot or will not support
Avoid confronting issues
However, those with high scores are seen as:
Open and honest
Courageous in meetings
Surfacing important issues others are reluctant to talk about— and creating an environment in which that can be discussed and solved
Meeting their commitments
Respecting other opinions—even if they disagree
While the rest of the Task and Relational capacities deal with what are more familiar kinds of topics, distilled to their core, they are described in the summary of behaviors above. The research behind the use of this instrument shows that leaders who demonstrate high levels of Courageous Authenticity lead organizations that consistently outperform their competitors and show lower turnover.
The challenge with these capabilities is that they are very hard to develop in short time frames through training or coaching. Technical skills matter—as does depth of experience. But if you want to strive for sustainable growth and profitability, you must look for courage, authenticity and integrity in executives and managers that you hire.
Want to screen for this in your executive and managerial hires? Here are a few ways to look for Courageous Authenticity and Integrity:
Look for a time that the leader directly, but constructively addressed team performance head on, and then coached the team to better outcomes.
Ask about times that they chose to constructively “swim upstream” of decisions they disagreed with, based on clear data.
Can they identify and surface the challenging issues without making the discussions a personal vendetta?
Do they speak openly in the presence of more senior authority?
Is there messaging consistent no matter what level of the organization they are addressing?
Of course, you want business skills and experience—as well as domain expertise in any leader that you hire. But the kinds of measures above go straight to the heart of leadership capabilities, which are the conduit for putting technical smarts to work in a constructive manner.