What I Know about Authentic Leadership I’m Learning with My Kindergartener

My six year old son has a foul mouth. Not most of the time. And not R or X rated; really more PG-13. But he’s six, so I’d still like him to be speaking in G-rated language. Yesterday, though, when his ball bounced into the dog’s water dish he came out with this:  “what the h---?” You parents out there can, I’m sure, imagine the shock with which my wife and I reacted to hearing that. And we pounced. Angry, stern language, a tearful time out, a lecture, a warning against doing it again. Never again, he promised.

But then I surprised him with Doritos at dinner. “Oh, what the h---?” Anger, tearful time out, lecture, warning. This time he sat hunched and defeated-looking on the couch while I hammered at him. But even as I did, I knew I wasn’t being honest with him. He hadn’t made up that phrase and they aren’t practicing it as a reading exercise in his kindergarten class. He heard it from me. 

And so I changed my message to him. “Let’s have a deal,” I said. “The consequence of that phrase is a time out. If you say it again, time out, no question. But I know you learned it from me, right?” He nodded, tears still in his eyes. “OK, well, that’s bad language and it’s not good if people think our family uses bad language, so I need to learn not to say that too. From now on our deal is that if I say it, I have to go to time out too.” He looked up at me with wide, bright eyes, a smile spreading across his face. Relief and wonder.

I don’t equate employees with children and I don’t think my child is in my employ, but I’m telling you this story now because I believe there’s a lesson in it for anyone who wants to be a more effective leader and it’s a lesson I don’t think I would have learned without my children: you may be tasked with getting certain results out of people; you may be the authority. But the more you are inclined to overtly remind them that you are the authority, the less they’ll be inclined to deliver the results you hope for. You breed more trust and engagement if you make it clear you expect the same from yourself as you do from them and if you empower them to call you on it if you’re falling short.

I was reminded of these ideas by this article in the Harvard Business Review: Discovering Your Authentic Leadership. “Authentic leaders,” the authors write, “realize they have to be willing to listen to feedback – especially the kind they don’t want to hear.” For leaders to know their authentic selves, “requires the courage and honesty to open up and examine their own experiences. As they do so, leaders become more humane and willing to be vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable” is not a word we are usually taught to associate with leaders. But maybe what we’ve always been taught about leaders isn’t as effective as it used to be. Again, from the Harvard Business Review: “Over the past five years, people have developed a deep distrust of leaders. It is increasingly evident that we need a new kind of business leader in the 21st century.” I think it’s helpful to consider the power of surrendering authority sometimes, especially to individuals who don’t typically have any of their own.

With my son, I made the calculated choice that to gain control over the situation, I had to give up control. My intent is not to control the person; it is to encourage the person to control himself. And so I framed the issue not as his failure to measure up to my standard, but as our shared failure to measure up to an organizational standard.

There is a principle I’m sure you’re familiar with that you can identify the leaders in a group by finding the ones willing to speak truth to power. I believe it’s also the case that, as a leader, you have to be willing to give up some power to get the truth. It takes courage for a leader to let go enough to make it a safe environment for employees to speak up. Just as it takes courage for those employees to test that freedom the first time. But as soon as you and the employee both act courageously in pursuit of a shared goal, then you are both leaders. And if success is what you’re after, a community of leaders is what you need.

Now, I know you’re wondering, and the answer is yes, I have been busted since the arrangement. When the Boston Celtics’ Ray Allen dunked around Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic in Saturday’s NBA playoff game I let fly with “the phrase.” And there he was, my son. Hands on his hips, a smile in his firm-set eyes. He raised an arm and pointed to the corner-- “Daddy,” he said. “You know where to go.” And I went. That’s our deal.

As President and Co-Founder of Allyis, Inc., a consultancy focused on the development and adoption of 2.0 technologies and practices within the Enterprise, Ethan Yarbrough is a social computing thought leader and active participant in the Enterprise 2.0 conversation. Via his Emerging Web Memo blog, Tweets, white papers and speaking engagements, Ethan actively drives conversations around how organizations can leverage and prosper from the use of social tools, platforms and cultures inside the firewall to foster knowledge management, collaboration, innovation and contribute to employee morale and retention.

Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks