Mother in Law: The importance of an authentic leader

This article is about how, in my opinion, the only important trait of a good leader (whether that is a line manager, a managing partner, or anything in between) is authenticity. You will be relieved to know I am not going to write this article on a white board and post a photo of me holding it on LinkedIn which seems to be the current thing to do. For the avoidance of doubt, of course, very little on LinkedIn has, in my opinion, any sort of authenticity.

The article comes with two caveats. The first is that I have been a line manager throughout the nearly six years I’ve been writing this blog and have not told a single team member that I do this. Some might say that means I lack authenticity - they are not seeing what they are getting. Hopefully regular readers will appreciate that I continually seek to be a better lawyer, manager and human and that this blog just has to be anonymous.

The second caveat is that, as research for this article, I googled 'what does it mean to be authentic' and the new AI tool has instantly done most of the leg-work for me. I think admitting this now keeps my authenticity in tact, and I promise to write what I was going to write and only refer back to what my laptop thinks (yes my laptop can now apparently think) occasionally.

So what does it mean to be an authentic leader? Why do I think it is so important?

Answering the second question first, I think it is the strong foundation you need to build trust and loyalty, to motivate and get buy-in for all your crazy ambitious plans, and because employees, like my darling dustbin lids, thrive on consistency and clarity.

By authentic I mean honest and straightforward. This means taking the blame for your own mistakes and not taking credit for someone else’s work. It means explaining clearly and with humility why there hasn’t been a pay rise this year, even more importantly if it is down to that person’s performance. What is the point in telling them they were great?

I was once in a role where the team leader tried to play the team off against each other, telling X that Y had criticised her behind her back and that sort of thing. Exhausting. By being honest and straightforward, your team is more likely to act like a team, and feel like one.

By authentic I mean trustworthy. Like my last three managing partners who have kept this little secret of mine. Of course, honesty does not mean telling everyone everything, and I think the best thing to do here is to own it when you can’t give full transparency - say 'I can’t tell you anything about [eg, HR issue] and I’m sure you understand because if you told me something like that you wouldn’t want me to tell anyone else'. This should actually be reassuring to the team member, even if it means they aren’t getting to hear the goss.

By authentic I also mean vulnerable. You are allowed feelings. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are not expected to know everything. You are allowed to have strengths and weaknesses.

By authentic I mean walking the walk. You can’t put in procedures or targets that you don’t follow yourself. That means meeting your fees target, doing your file reviews, getting money on account - whatever it is that you are asking them to do.

By authentic I mean (or my laptop says) your actions should align with your values. This is the same thing really, except I suppose if you don’t agree with a policy within your firm, you need to do the following to remain authentic: you should try to understand the reasons it has been put in place, explain those reasons to your team and follow the policy whilst at the same time campaigning to the relevant people that it should be altered. Don’t moan to your team that it should be altered. This is basically talking behind someone’s back (see above re honesty and trustworthiness). Another example of your actions aligning with your values is as follows. I had some ongoing health issues a while back and team leader was really caring. Until I handed my notice in when, for the duration of my notice period, they cared a hell of a lot less about my health. What does that say about their reasons for caring in the first place? It certainly wasn’t the case that they cared about me as a person if they could switch it off like that.

By authentic I don’t mean being popular, or being a good friend. Sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions. At school, it wasn’t the teachers that let you get away with murder that you respected the most, even when you were the one trying to get away with murder. You were testing them. But I bet that if you base your leadership style on just simply being authentic, you will be popular anyway. Stick that on your LinkedIn whiteboard.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article