Being authentic is a good management trait

What are the biggest concerns for a CEO? Winning customer loyalty, competing for talent, flexibility and adaptability to change, stimulating innovation and creativity, enabling entrepreneurship, tight cost control and succession planning come as the obvious answer. Most of the surveys conducted by big consulting companies on top CEO concerns say much of the same thing but in a different manner. I totally disagree.

If you have ever taken a survey, you would know that questions and the way they have been asked would influence the answers. In other words, the surveying agency to an extent would have created the desired answers first and created the survey later. I think we are part of a survey age—for the best MBA institute there is a survey, the best organisation to work with—there is a survey, the best salaries—there is a survey, top concerns of CEOs—there is a survey.

All of that is certainly worthwhile and it is indeed all about objective information that gets collected through painful research methodologies. We also have objective information based on statistical surveys that tells us how many people in the corporate world would cheat on their partners and why; and also about their ability to cheat on the people they are cheating with.

I have interacted with CEOs in the past and asked them what was their biggest concern. They told me it was mainly three things and I have not found that mentioned in any of the surveys. They said the first challenge is being authentic which is not easy at all. Many people in their organisation have gone through training on leadership traits.

Being your own person is the most challenging task, when you feel that everyone is pressuring you to take one kind of course and you are indeed alone rather like a goal-keeper facing the penalty kick—alone, lonely and no one to depend on. It reminds one of the ‘loneliness of the long-distance runner’.

Being authentic and true to oneself would mean having to accept one’s faults as well as strengths—accepting one’s weaker side is an essential part of this experience. The problem arises when we become too eager to win the approval of others. We often try to do that by covering our shortcomings. We sacrifice our authenticity to gain the respect, admiration and approval of our associates.

The second and third concerns according to them were to keep managers down the line engaged and unified that results in energising the workforce so that the organisation is able to take a quantum leap and keep up high levels of performance.

Written by Santhosh Babu
Published in The Financial Express: Saturday, September 29, 2007.