Being authentic, even when the truth hurts

Boy, that authenticity thing.  It’s been all the rage for a while now in leadership.  It’s the willingness to show others who we really are and not wear a mask.  But shouldn’t true authenticity tell us as much about ourselves as it tells others?

Last week I was working with an organization, and they were set on adding empathy to their mission, vision, and values.  So I asked the CEO, “what does empathy mean to you”?  “Well, it’s about feeling what my people feel”, he said.  “You know, understanding where they really come from”.  “Ok”, I replied, “but do you really know where they come from?  You brought me in because your employee satisfaction scores are looking pretty sad.  Can you tell me how they feel and what’s causing this”?  He huffed, stammered a minute, and said “well, it’s because they’re a lot of younger workers.  I just can’t understand them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have empathy for them”.

And that was that.  Problem pinpointed – it was everyone else’s fault.

Hold the bus.  If empathy is about connection and understanding, but he isn’t connecting and understanding his people even though they’re telling him point blank in their employee surveys that they’re not happy, there’s a big problem here.  Blaming that disconnect on their gender/race/age only adds to that disconnect.  He didn’t try to connect and understand his people, he made an assumption and jumped to conclusions.  So I asked him…if empathy through connection and understanding isn’t authentically part of his organization’s culture, why add it in the vision, mission, and values?  

Because it’s trendy.

Because Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, and Brené Brown say so.

Because it’s in The Wall Street Journal/Forbes/Inc.

None of these are good reasons.  None of them point to either the CEO or his organization being authentically empathic.  So I brought out the Ernst & Young Survey which shows that when you say you have empathy but don’t show it, which is to say you don’t ‘walk the talk’, it’s actually worse than not adding empathy at all.  People can smell when someone isn’t being authentic, and it can go very badly.  Pretending to have it without showing it actually makes productivity, innovation, and profit plummet.  

Here’s the nitty gritty.  If you have empathy, now is the time to shine and really bring it to the forefront of leadership.  With the advent of AI, big tech, and all of the issues we’re dealing with from generational friction to workplace dissatisfaction and employee attrition, leaders who are authentic about having and using empathy will supercharge the future of leadership because it’s really who they are, not because they’re just following the herd. But if you really don’t have empathy?  Don’t pretend just because it’s ‘cool’.  Take the time to learn so you can authentically be an empathic leader, or leave it out.  Know thyself.