Authenticity in Leadership: Living Your Company Values
By: David Shechtman
“Come on, what’s the big deal? She clearly didn’t follow our company practices… but look at how much money she generates for the firm. Life is not black or white—there’s lots of gray. We just need to emphasize the outcome of this issue and not how we got there.”
This is what we call a slippery-slope conversation. Nearly every business leader has one on a regular basis. It’s always concerning. It sometimes leads to catastrophe.
So, what is the slippery slope the above leader is treading? Is it that values are black or white rather than gray, as the leader suggests? Or is it that the communications on this decision is to shine a light on the result and to skip the process?
When I ask most people this question, they tend to agree with the first question, that values are black or white. I asked them the last time that they told a loved one a white lie.
They quickly embrace the second question, that communication emphasizes outcome rather than process.
I concur.
Organizational life can be maddening. In addition to all the work that needs to be done, people have to manage all the relational dimensions of a company (sometimes called that dirty word “politics”). It’s not enough to make a decision; most people have to explain and justify how they arrived at their decision. It’s not enough to meet a deadline; most people have to coordinate their work output with multiple teams and external stakeholders.
Company values, therefore, are supposed to guide these ongoing decisions. No organization is going to create a 12,000-page employee handbook that explains what to do in each and every scenario, so these values are meant to instruct employees on how to embrace principles when facing big and small decisions.
However, we all know that values are broad principles. They don’t map neatly onto real-life situations most of the time. Is integrity important to me? I would say yes. Am I a fraud because I told my five-year-old child that Santa Claus might not bring her presents this year because she hasn’t been brushing her teeth? Probably not.
Why? Because most decisions that are made in organizational life involve a complex environment and multiple dilemmas that have to be accounted for.
Let’s consider the hypothetical situation from the opening quote. Most leaders have dealt with a sales professional who bends—and sometimes breaks—the rules.
The salesperson delivered a significant result for the company. Sometimes, only a person at a particular point in time can deliver an account or a purchase.
Oftentimes, salespeople are asked by customers to do extraordinary things that may be completely out of scope with what they normally do.
Quite often, standard operating procedures—even ones informed by clear values—can be modified by exception without a meaningful risk to the company. Organizations make exceptions all of the time for plenty of valid reasons.
Here, we see that circumstances can be pretty gray and that effectively dealing with them might not be so clear-cut.
So, what is the problem with the opening quote?
The problem is the following: The leader wants to shy away from communicating how the difficult decision was made.
Being an executive coach for over 20 years, I’ve learned from my clients what makes me most effective. At the start of my career, I thought clients appreciated my education and desire to be helpful.
They seemed to like these things about me.
But what they’ve raved about was my ability to “think out loud” when taking them through a decision. Getting this feedback felt awkward for me. It was like being praised for breathing or showing up. Nothing special.
Yet, I’ve learned that this behavior, while second nature to me, is rare in the business world. Most employees receive instructions or final decisions with very little explanation of how a leader got there. They don’t know the beginning, middle, and end of the process that yielded a result. Can they push back and demand to know what logic guided the decision-making effort? Probably. But that’s not very realistic in most company settings, especially not on a regular basis. Most employees would likely be branded as obstructionists if they slowed everything down like that. So they don’t.
Yet they have an instinctual need to know why important things are happening around them. So they muddle through and learn to operate without important context. They learn to guess. They learn to interpret signals that may reveal motive.
Sometimes, they spend more time decoding and decrypting signals than completing important tasks.
The solution to this trap is practicing a form of authentic leadership called Thinking Out Loud. It’s authentic leadership because it reveals the sausage-making (the decision-making process) and not just the sausage (the decision).
Thinking Out Loud typically takes the following format when explaining a decision:
The context for making the decision usually includes environmental factors, cultural and people issues, timing matters, and external stakeholder concerns.
The company values at play in the process. It could involve one, two, or all of them.
The dilemmas confronted when making the decision.
The intellectual frameworks considered and the intuitive feelings experienced by people involved in the process.
The way the final decision was arrived at by the responsible party or parties.
Any unresolved concerns moving forward.
The above list is a kitchen-sink approach to Thinking Out Loud. Many decisions won’t require specificity on all of these points. It’s important to consider your audience before revealing confidential or protected information, so right-size this list for your specific needs.
Authenticity is a crucial and necessary aspect of values-based leadership. As clear and straightforward as most values sound in the abstract, they rarely help people make decisions in the heat of the moment.
The only way most employees will learn to integrate and operationalize these values is by observing how executive leaders deploy values in making real-life decisions.
Sharing only a final decision—even a values-based decision—rarely helps.
Thinking Out Loud constitutes an extremely effective form of authentic leadership. Not only does it reveal the various factors that a leader considers while making a difficult decision, but it also provides a glimpse into a real person working through ambiguity. It models the behavior that most executive leaders would want their employees to follow.
Being authentic sometimes means sharing deeply personal information. Some leaders benefit from that sort of deep connection with their employees. But thinking out loud is a form of authentic leadership that everyone can deploy.
Embracing authentic leadership and mastering the art of 'Thinking Out Loud' can transform the dynamics of your organization, fostering a culture of transparency and understanding. If you're ready to infuse these principles into your leadership style and want to enhance your team's connectivity and authenticity, connect with us HERE to delve deeper into the intricacies of values-based leadership.