Michael D. Brown
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6.5 Fiery Smoke Signals That Will Let You Know if Your
Leadership is Viewed as Less Than Authentic
An authentic leader is someone who engages with employees, and both higher-level leadership and employees trust to do their job well.
Signs of a good leader are an engaged workforce, high morale, and camaraderie among their employees. Additionally, leadership will request your advice and leadership acumen when making decisions which affect your team and the business as a whole.
However, this can result in employees and leadership viewing your abilities and work ethic as less than authentic. When this happens, you should evaluate your current role and find a way to turn these beliefs around.
Here are 6.5 smoke signals that will let you know your leadership skills are not as authentic as you might think.
1. People don’t come to you for advice
For decades this has been the one reality of leadership. If your employees no longer come to you with their problems or concerns, then there is separation somewhere between you and your employees. This is especially true of employees who at one time used your office door as a rotating door to their internal company issues.
This lack of engagement is often a result of poor communication, unmet promises, or inability to engage.
2. People do not provide you feedback about your ideas
When you share your ideas with employees or colleagues and are met with a nod, modest “yes,” or no reaction at all you may assume your idea was so good, there is no reason for others to comment. However, it is rare in life that novel ideas are met with no criticism, comment, or additional suggestions.
A lack of feedback may tell you that employees don’t feel you value their opinion or worse you are so defensive about criticism that their feedback is not worth the time to listen to you dismiss their opinion.
Either way, losing your defensiveness and developing listening skills is a good way to step out of this concern.
3. People do not come to you with their own ideas
Any time that you lose touch with employees, you can take this as a sign that there is something wrong. Part of a leader’s role, in fact, a very big part, is to help employees through development and delivering on their ideas.
When employees no longer come to you with ideas, they may feel you can’t be trusted as in you will “steal” their idea as your own. Or, perhaps they feel their idea will end up in a drawer somewhere and lost on false ears. However, an employee sees if they cannot trust you to pass along their ideas, then you need to improve your communication and possibly your leadership style.
4. You focus too much on KPIs
Leadership at any level is measured by your team's ability to hit Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Companies need metrics to understand from a high level how the company and individual teams are performing.
However, some leaders find KPI’s as their sole approach to determining how well your team is doing, resulting in undue pressure on employees who may otherwise be performing well with what they have to work with.
Identifying the reality of work by talking to employees to determine what constraints are prohibiting them from achieving their goals is important. Are goals unrealistic? Are there unknown obstacles? Or, are there personal considerations for the employee? Evaluating just the numbers indicates a personal separation between you and your employees often indicating a lack of trust.
5. People try to suck up to you
No matter your work environment, there will always be employees who try to cater to the supervisor. Whether they provide “information”, bring gifts, or simply engage in playful banter, the goal is to get on the good side of their leader.
While this may not be in itself a bad thing, it is important for a leader to gauge how accessible you are to your employees. If sucking up to the boss is an effective way of getting your attention other employees can see you as having a preference. This lowers morale on your team and begs the question if your favoritism can be purchased rather than earned.
6. Other leaders are more respected than you
All leaders should strive to achieve success. However, if other leaders garner more respect from your team than you do, this can be an indication of a trust problem on your team.
Most of the time this is not a problem, as many variables dictate popularity: friendships, family, personality, etc. However, if you find that you are not connecting with your team, and when you direct expectations, all eyes go to another leader for approval, this is a smoke signal that you need to work on your employee engagement to build influence.
6.5. Show directive to be authentic
To be an authentic leader - one who is respected and influential - it is important to drive motivation and build trust. Identifying smoke signals such as those mentioned above is a good way to monitor your interactions and trust from employees. Working on correcting your areas of improvement is a sign you are a leader interested in building a quality team.
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About the Author: Michael D. Brown
Michael D. Brown is a Global Management expert driving results through (and with) companies, organizations, and academia. He is a sought-after speaker, coach, and author of Fresh Passion: Get A Brand or Die a Generic, Fresh Customer Service®: Treat the Employee as #1 and the Customer as #2 and You Will Get Customers for Life, and Fresh Passion Leadership: Become a Distinct, Branded Leader or Extinct Generic. He has over 18 years’ experience in helping companies and organizations achieve results. These organizations include the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, BP, Amoco, Capital One, Jason’s Deli, Murphy Oil, Wendy’s, Omni Hotels, Houston Rockets, Wells Fargo, Marriott, Ford Foundation, The University of Findlay, Jackson State University, and Hampton University. He has held numerous leadership positions at Fortune Global 100 companies.
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