authenticity

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COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

Your organisation announces a policy you privately believe is wrong — one that directly affects your team. In the next team meeting, you:

Present it as positively as possible — your role is to maintain team morale and uncertainty from leadership is not helpful Acknowledge your own reservations honestly while committing to implementing it — your team deserves your real view and your genuine commitment Present it neutrally and wait to see how the team responds before deciding how much of your view to share Deliver the policy without comment — it is not your place to editorialize on decisions made above your level

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

When a team member does something that frustrates you significantly — a repeated behaviour, a missed standard, something you have let go before — your most honest approach is:

You address it in the moment — directly, specifically, and without making it larger than it is You wait for the right moment and raise it when you are calmer — you do not want your frustration to shape the conversation You note it and watch whether it happens again before deciding whether to raise it at all You name it when it happens and name what it is costing — the team and the individual both need clarity, not management

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

When you are under significant pressure — a difficult deliverable, a conflict above you, a situation you are not sure how to navigate — the version of you that shows up for your team is:

Mostly the same — you are aware of what you are carrying and make deliberate choices about what you bring into the team space Slightly more controlled — you pull back and become more task-focused when things are hard Noticeably different — you know your team reads you accurately and they adjust around the version of you that pressure produces You have not thought about it in those terms — you focus on the work and trust the team to focus on theirs

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

You are asked in a senior meeting to defend a decision you did not make and do not fully agree with. The people in the room respect you and your view carries weight. You:

Defend it fully — your role requires it and the people in the room need a clear signal from you Defend what is defensible and name what you have questions about — even in a senior room, your credibility depends on your honesty Defend it with some qualification — you make clear it is the direction without fully endorsing every element Ask whether you can share some concerns alongside the direction — you want to be transparent about where your alignment is partial

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

The most authentic leaders are the ones who share everything — who bring their full emotional and personal truth to their professional interactions, who are transparent about their doubts, their mistakes, and their vulnerabilities. Full transparency is what authenticity requires. You:

Consider this essentially right — full transparency with your team about your real state is the definition of authentic leadership Know that authenticity requires honesty, not indiscriminate disclosure. The authentic leader shares what is relevant, what the relationship requires, and what serves the team's ability to understand and trust them — not everything they think and feel in every interaction Think full transparency is the aspiration and that professional judgment about what to share is the necessary constraint Have found that the leaders most trusted for their authenticity are not those who share the most but those who share accurately — who never perform a state they are not in

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

After a conversation where you were not fully honest — where you said something technically accurate but not what you actually thought — your honest relationship with that afterwards is:

You move on — not every conversation can be a model of full transparency and you did what was appropriate given the context You go back — you find the person and tell them there was more you should have said, and you say it You feel the discomfort but conclude the moment has passed and reopening it would cause more problems than it solves You rationalise it — you find the reasons the version you gave was not that far from what you actually think, and you close the discomfort that way

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

Good leaders protect their team from unnecessary uncertainty and anxiety — they do not share doubts, concerns, or information that would destabilise the team's confidence or performance. A certain amount of protective performance is part of effective leadership. You:

Consider this essentially right — leaders who share every doubt and concern create anxiety rather than confidence Know that protection has a legitimate and limited place in leadership, and that the version most leaders practise — protecting the team from reality in the name of maintaining morale — produces teams who cannot read their situation accurately and who have learned to distrust the information they receive from above Think the protection principle is right and that the line between useful protection and dishonest performance is the key judgment call Have found that the most effective version of leader protection is not withholding difficulty but framing it in ways that build rather than erode the team's capacity to navigate it

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

There is a version of your professional leadership that the people who work for you have probably named to each other — not the worst version of you, not the best, but the specific gap between the leader you present yourself as and the leader they experience in the moments when consistency is hardest. The most honest version of what that gap is, as you understand it, is:

Small — the version of yourself you present and the version they experience are broadly consistent across most conditions Specific to pressure — under significant demand, a different version of you shows up and your team has learned to read it even when you believe you are managing it A pattern you are aware of but have not yet fully addressed — there are specific ways in which your presented self and your actual self diverge that you have named but not changed Something you are genuinely uncertain about — you do not know with confidence what your team would say about the gap if asked directly and honestly

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

When you think about the values you most publicly claim as a leader — the ones you name in team meetings, in your leadership philosophy, in conversations about culture — the most honest version of how consistently your behaviour reflects them is:

Less consistently than you would like — there are specific situations where what you do and what you say you stand for are not the same thing Consistently enough — you do not always get it right but the pattern of your behaviour is broadly aligned with what you claim You are genuinely not sure — and the uncertainty itself is the most revealing thing about the question Fairly consistently, but not in your hardest moments — when things are most difficult, a different version of your values tends to show up

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

You want to create an environment where your team feels genuinely safe to speak honestly — to raise problems early, disagree with you, and share bad news without managing your reaction. The most effective way to build that environment is to tell your team explicitly that you value honesty and want them to come to you with problems. Making the expectation clear is the starting point. You:

Consider this essentially right — making the expectation clear is how you build the psychological conditions for honesty Know that telling your team you value honesty while your actual responses to honesty remain unchanged is one of the most common and most costly leadership failures. Your team does not hear what you say about honesty. They watch what you do when honesty arrives — and that is the environment they actually work in Think stating the expectation is necessary and that the behaviour follows from having made the commitment explicit Have found that the leaders most trusted for creating honest environments are not those who say the right things about honesty but those whose responses to difficult truths are consistently better than their teams expected

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

A team member has been struggling visibly for several weeks. You have checked in twice and received the same answer both times — "I'm fine, just a lot on." You suspect something more significant is going on. You:

Accept the answer — you have asked twice and pushing further crosses a professional line Consult HR — if something significant is going on you want to handle it correctly Name what you are observing specifically and say directly that you are concerned — not asking them to be fine but asking them to let you know what they actually need Create more space and wait — some things take time to surface and pressure can make it harder, not easier

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

When you think about the feedback you have received about your leadership — specifically the feedback about the gap between your stated values and your observed behaviour — the most honest version of how you have acted on it is:

You have acted on it specifically and have sought evidence that the change is visible to others You have thought about it seriously but the behavioural change has been incremental You have not received clear enough feedback on this dimension to know specifically what to address You have changed internally but are unsure whether the external experience of you has shifted in the way you intended

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

When you think about the values you most publicly claim as a leader and the ones you most privately hold — the ones you would act on even if no one was watching — the most honest description of the relationship between them is:

They are largely the same — the public and private versions are consistent They are partly different — the public values are a curated version of the private ones, with some things included and others omitted You are not sure — you have not examined the question with enough care to know the answer They are mostly consistent with specific contexts where the alignment breaks down

COMMUNICATION & PRESENCE

The most honest version of what your team would say makes you difficult to be fully honest with — the thing they would say to a trusted colleague but not to you — is:

That you take feedback personally even when you say you welcome it That you already have a view before the conversation starts and the discussion is often about arriving at it You genuinely do not know — and the fact that you do not know is itself the answer most worth examining That there is a version of you that shows up when things are difficult that makes honesty feel costly — and most people have learned it is not worth the risk

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Share with your network

Your organisation announces a policy you privately believe is wrong — one that directly affects your team. In the next team meeting, you:

When a team member does something that frustrates you significantly — a repeated behaviour, a missed standard, something you have let go before — your most honest approach is:

When you are under significant pressure — a difficult deliverable, a conflict above you, a situation you are not sure how to navigate — the version of you that shows up for your team is:

You are asked in a senior meeting to defend a decision you did not make and do not fully agree with. The people in the room respect you and your view carries weight. You:

The most authentic leaders are the ones who share everything — who bring their full emotional and personal truth to their professional interactions, who are transparent about their doubts, their mistakes, and their vulnerabilities. Full transparency is what authenticity requires. You:

After a conversation where you were not fully honest — where you said something technically accurate but not what you actually thought — your honest relationship with that afterwards is:

Good leaders protect their team from unnecessary uncertainty and anxiety — they do not share doubts, concerns, or information that would destabilise the team's confidence or performance. A certain amount of protective performance is part of effective leadership. You:

When you think about the values you most publicly claim as a leader — the ones you name in team meetings, in your leadership philosophy, in conversations about culture — the most honest version of how consistently your behaviour reflects them is:

A team member has been struggling visibly for several weeks. You have checked in twice and received the same answer both times — "I'm fine, just a lot on." You suspect something more significant is going on. You:

When you think about the feedback you have received about your leadership — specifically the feedback about the gap between your stated values and your observed behaviour — the most honest version of how you have acted on it is:

When you think about the values you most publicly claim as a leader and the ones you most privately hold — the ones you would act on even if no one was watching — the most honest description of the relationship between them is:

The most honest version of what your team would say makes you difficult to be fully honest with — the thing they would say to a trusted colleague but not to you — is:

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