Credibility gap? Some leaders have a chasm...
In our first issue, we dive into the space between what leaders say and what they mean, why Twitter is having a bad day back in the office and why words are always a choice...
But first, welcome! If you’re reading here, it’s probably because you, like me, are fascinated by modern leadership. By the organisations and the people that shape our collective futures, at home, at work and out in our society. And by the choices they make or don’t make (and remember, not making a choice is still a choice…)
I’ve always had a fairly healthy scepticism for a lot of what constitutes “leadership.” All those well-meaning but ultimately ineffective missives from on high. One-way communication that fails to read the room. Patronising and often patriarchal taps on the shoulder about how one “should behave” at work and in life. And the gap between what leaders say and what they actually mean.
There is course a better way. And that path is straightforward, but it’s not always easy.
Sidenote and movie spoiler alert! In one of my favourite films, Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” (scroll ahead another para now if you don’t want spoilers), the big reveal comes as…
… Christian Bale’s character explains that he wasn’t the world’s greatest magician after all, able to appear in two places at once. He was an identical twin. I know! Stay with me for the relevance! In flashback, he shares that once he had sustained an injury to his thumb, meaning he lost the thumb; there was only one way that he and his twin could keep up the fiction of being one person. You guessed it. His twin had to have the same thumb chopped off so they continued to be completely identical. And the lesson?
“It was simple. Straightforward. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.”
Easy and straightforward are not the same thing. Making a choice to be a straightforward leader, one with good intent and with real purpose, isn’t always easy. In fact, it’s often easier to take the less straightforward path. To lie, cover things up, massage the message, or to ignore all those people around you telling you it might be time for change. It’s certainly a lot more common in many of our organisations and institutions today.
And sadly, there’s a lot of it about at the moment. Scan the headlines on Twitter (oh the irony) or any newspaper of your choice, and you’ll see example after example of modern leadership being lived out loud and going horribly wrong.
Fall into the credibility gap, where the water is warm…
One of the worst offenders for me is when organisations fall into the “credibility gap.” Let me explain.
This is the gap between what organisations (and their leaders) mean and what they actually say. Or what they say and what they actually mean. You know what I mean.
Case in point. FIFA taking the Budweiser sponsorship money months ago, then bowing to pressure from the Qatari authorities to ban alcohol sales at the World Cup stadiums days before the tournament started. Trying to pivot to a focus on Bud Zero, that sound you hear is a million bottles of the stuff falling through a football field-sized gap.
Or in your world, that gap might be created by someone in a leadership position who pledges to listen to what stakeholders, customers, employees, the general public, have to say, before taking any action. Then goes ahead and acts first anyway. We’ve all seen it. And no doubt there is always pressure and challenge behind the scenes influencing leaders away from the righteous path. I’ve been there. And I’ve advised leaders on any number of challenging situations with varying degrees of success. But that’s when you get down to the brass tacks with your leaders.
Is this straightforward? Yes.
Is it easy? No.
You know what you have to do…
Great leaders know it can’t always be easy. That the harder the challenge that lies ahead, the more reward there will ultimately be for being straightforward and collaborative in their approach to solving it.
As an emerging or established leader in your organisation, here are the two questions you should always ask of yourself and challenge others with:
"Do we really mean what we say? And will we say what we really mean?"
If the answer to either of those questions is no - then don't proceed. Go back and be a leader some more until you can answer yes to both.
Corporate messaging, PR and stakeholder management will never fill in the gap between what you say and what you do. And it's obvious to everyone watching.
The foundation of great leadership communications? Good leadership behaviour.
Makes sense. Doesn’t always happen.
Where fore art thou leadership Twitter?
You’ll have read far too much by now about Elon and the Tweets, the band name I am now giving the Twitter meltdown situation. But let me just say this. Being a hard ass who loves to send notes to teams en masse, exhorting them to work harder or else, is not the way. I know. I used to be that leader, many years ago. When I was thrust into a leadership position in a PR agency, with no coaching and plenty of client and team challenges thrown my way immediately. And the deadlines. Oh the agency deadlines…
Yes I was younger and yes, you learn with experience. But oh how I wish someone had offered me leadership coaching back then. Not mentoring. Not the “I do it this way so you try it that way” approach. We are all different and the value of coaching is that it enables you to take ownership of your differences and find the approach that works for you.
So seeing Twitter’s impersonal notes to the organisation about layoffs, or the recent one from Elon (the work even harder or else one), was a little triggering. I wrote about this in more detail over on LinkedIn if you are interested, with a compare and contrast exercise with another tech start-up doing layoffs - Stripe.
Stripe did a lot right in owning the problem and the responsbility and making sure the comms reflected the substance of what they, as a leadership team, were prepared to do to support affected employees. They got the behaviours right even though this was a tough call. If you have to make difficult decisions, Stripe did a lot you can learn from in how to communicate them.
And finally…
I’d like to start offering you a coaching prompt for the next two weeks. There are so many great coaching questions that help unlock your thinking and your preconceptions, and I’d love to know if they are helpful!
Here’s our first question. Take it away and use it as you will. Reflect on it and see if it resonates for you right now.
“If you were at your best, what would you do right now?”
This could apply to any sphere of your life or work. As micro or macro as you need it to be. Open it up and sit with it.
I hope to see you back in two weeks(ish) time! Let me know what you think and any ideas for leadership topics you’d like to see covered.
In the meantime, you can find me on LinkedIn, on Twitter (for now!) and at my website: www.narrativepurpose.com where I offer communications consultancy and leadership coaching to individuals, organisations and creative agencies.
And please share if you’ve enjoyed this and think someone you know might benefit too!
Louise