Recently a friend sent a card by (if I remember rightly) Daily Telegraph cartoonist, Matt.  The card depicted a boardroom scene and the caption was along the lines of “That’s an excellent idea, Miss Smith.  Would one of the men like to put it forward?”  It must have spoken to some real or perceived truth – it made me laugh out loud.

As to that “truth”, it may have been about sexism in the workplace or it may, equally, have been about influencing others – whether you’re a man or a woman, and whether you are seeking to communicate with your seniors, your peers, or those you lead, there will be times when your message isn’t being heard.  When this is the case, what do you do next?

All too often, the key reason our message isn’t being heard is this:  we are expressing it in our own language (be that logical persuasion, using facts and data or by some other means) and assuming others will think about the same issue in the same way.  So, a good place to start is by putting ourselves in the shoes of our audience.  How do those we want to influence think about these things?  This can be hard – if all your boss ever thinks about is how to catch people out who are doing things wrong, you may be reluctant to speak his or her language.  Still, to speak the language of your audience may be enough to transform the conversation into one in which you get heard.  More than this, it may be enough to transform an important relationship, so that you are heard with ease again and again and again.

The Matt cartoon also speaks to a deeper truth – that sometimes you’re just not the person to put forward a message or idea.  If your agenda is to attract approval or appreciation, you may find it hard to stand to one side and still, letting someone else deliver an important message can be an effective way to be heard.  This is one reason why organisations (or rather, people in organisations) commission outside consultants to do research and then deliver a message which isn’t easily heard from people inside the organisation.  It’s hard to speak up as an individual and say “you ask for our ideas but you always shoot them down so we’ve stopped putting them forward”.  It can be more compelling to hear that “members of your board expressed the widespread view that whilst you ask for ideas, you are highly critical of ideas such that people feel it’s not worth offering ideas”.

There are ways to promote an idea without going to the expense of hiring in external consultants (which is, in any case, a rather hit or miss affair).  Savvy leaders know that ‘socialising’ an idea before making a formal presentation is an important part of gaining support for a proposal.  If you’re going into a meeting wondering if your proposal will be approved, you probably haven’t done your homework.

Sometimes, effective leaders make some dramatic gesture to get their message across, like the leader who, after several months of seeking unsuccessfully to engage staff in dialogue about the need to turn their part of the business into profit, announced the closure of the department.  Suddenly staff were ready to talk and, what’s more, to contribute ideas to enable a radical re-shaping of their department and, in this way, to secure its future.

Why is influencing important?  Because the more senior you are, the more you need to work with and through others.  And the more you need to work with and through others, the more you need to be able to gain support for ideas, proposals and plans of action.

I wonder, how does this idea land with you?  It could be that you understand the need to influence and still, you don’t know how – for you, the challenge is in turning this intention into effective action.  Equally, it could be that you find the ideas above uncomfortable and even repulsive – for you, the challenge is squaring the need to influence with values around openness and honesty or even with your preference for getting the work done.

I’d love to hear from you in via the comments box below – how does the idea of influencing others land with you?  What has worked for you?  And where are you stuck and still needing to make progress?

A few days ago as I walked through my local supermarket I caught a glimpse of an interview quote, inviting the reader to buy a magazine in order to learn more.  The quote was something along the lines of “I won’t cut my hair, because it’s who I am”.  It could equally have said “I won’t change my clothes/ adapt my accent/ take the ear-ring out of my nose…” and many more things besides.  I found myself thinking “No, these things are not who you are.  They’re ways you choose to express yourself”.  Several days after I walked past this magazine, I realised that the headline was pointing me to an important truth for those of us in leadership positions:  we can be outstanding leaders AND be ourselves.  At the same time, we need to be clear on who we really are.

Why is this important?  At one level it’s about fashion in the world of leadership:  it’s so fashionable to be “authentic”.  If you pop the words “authentic leadership” into your search engine you’ll find all sorts of scholarly articles and theory.  A number of authors have written books on the subject.  It’s in vogue on the discussion groups on LinkedIn.  At another level, authentic leadership draws our attention because the challenge of being an outstanding leader whilst also being true to ourselves is one that exercises people in leadership roles – many people at some point in their leadership career find themselves grappling with what appears, on the surface, to be an irreconcilable dichotomy.

Take Jurgen, for example.  Promoted at a young age into a senior leadership role, Jurgen looked around him and formed a view of what it meant to be a leader in his organisation.  He started to adopt the behaviours of his peers, especially those he admired.  In his tough-talking, fast-paced organisation he started to adjust his style to make sure his staff were in no doubt what was expected of them and what the consequences would be if they didn’t deliver the results expected of them.  He reduced his focus on people and increased his emphasis on results, identifying key projects, making plans for each project, allocating work amongst members of his team and tracking results.

Jurgen thought he was doing the right thing but he quickly discovered it wasn’t working.  It wasn’t working because his colleagues – previously his peers and now members of his team – seemed to be offering less cooperation than before so that achieving results was getting more and more difficult.  He didn’t know it but it wasn’t working in the eyes of those who had recruited him either, who expected he would bring a softer approach than other members of the senior management team, in line with their aspirations for a less “macho” and more emotionally intelligent leadership style.  Above all, it wasn’t working for Jurgen because it felt deeply uncomfortable – it just “wasn’t him”.  Jurgen felt like an imposter in the role, because he didn’t feel comfortable doing it the way others were doing it and he thought this was the way it needed to be done.

Jurgen took the initiative to organise a coach, who helped him to understand that he could be himself and still be an outstanding leader.  He developed a statement of values in which authenticity was key.  He dropped the persona he had adopted when he first stepped into his role in favour of an approach that was more natural to him.  It seemed like he was on track.  At the same time, when I met Jurgen a few months later, I noticed that I had a suspicion about some of Jurgen’s behaviours – it seemed possible to me that some of the behaviours he identified with as an expression of his authentic self dated back to a time in his early life and had not been examined since.  He thought he was the person who was always kind to people and he was – but he didn’t know why or even what kindness meant to him.  In moving away from the leadership persona he had adopted to a more “authentic” way of being, Jurgen had stepped into a set of unconscious behaviours which, in turn, were not always effective or even truly him.

Meeting Jurgen prompted me to identify and share some of the things I have seen leaders do who have learnt to be highly effective whilst also remaining true to themselves.  Here are just a few of them along with a few words about how Jurgen has applied them:

First, set your intentions

Jurgen set an intention to be authentic in his role as a leader and, following our conversation, added his intention to continue to develop as an outstanding leader.  This set up what you might call an inner dialogue as he started to explore what it meant to be both.

This was coupled with being clear about his intentions in specific situations, for example when he had to address a performance shortfall in a member of his team.  He sensed that being an outstanding leader in this situation meant addressing the issue and bringing it to a resolution – to an improvement in performance or to the recognition that his team member wasn’t in the right job.  At the same time, he also wanted to embody his core value of kindness and compassion.  He set the intention to explore how he could address the issue with kindness and compassion whilst still bringing it to a clear resolution.

Then, discern between your intentions and the means by which you achieve them

Jurgen realised that in attempting to be kind to his team member, he had been holding back on addressing the issue at all.  He’d let his team member flounder and he’d stood back and watched as colleagues became increasingly frustrated at the levels of performance they witnessed.  As the annual appraisals season approached, Jurgen knew he would be basing his year-end performance rating on behaviours he witnessed but not discussed with his team member.  The more he looked at his approach, the more he realised that it was anything but kind, even though kindness was at the heart of his intentions.

Once he had examined the effects of his existing approach, Jurgen was in a better position to explore what different approach he might take.  At this point, it made sense to him to ask more experienced colleagues how they handled this kind of issue.  He discovered that those he most admired were most likely to address the issue head on.  He also discovered that they were the most skilful in the way they framed the issue.  This gave him the basis for a different approach which was still consistent with his core value of kindness.

Ask yourself, “is this really me?”

Jurgen went one step further, and took time to examine why kindness was so important to him.  In doing so, he became aware of the extent to which he’d taken on a value of his mother’s – sometimes even at his own expense.  Examining his value in this way helped him to decide both to keep this value and to re-frame it.  He decided he needed to include kindness towards himself as an essential part of this value.  He likened it to the oxygen mask in the plane – realising he had to put on his own oxygen mask before helping others.

Jurgen started to develop the habit of examining his beliefs about himself and found that, sometimes, the outcomes surprised him.  He discovered some beliefs he decided to let go, realising he had thought they were his own and finding they were not.  As a result and, over time, he developed a stronger and deeper understanding of himself and greater confidence and self belief.  It seemed paradoxical to him at first and still, alongside this greater sense of self, he found he was less attached to doing things in particular ways – he became more flexible in his approach.  And as he became more flexible in his approach, consciously adapting his behaviour to meet the needs of the situation as well as thinking about what it meant to be authentic, he found his effectiveness as a leader improved.

How about you?  To what extent is it an aspiration you hold:  to be both authentic and effective in your role as a leader?  And how consciously do you explore what it means to be you?  How open are you to new insights about yourself – how conscious are you?  Please share what comes up for you in the comments.