Chapter 7
Strive for Authenticity

On a scale of one to ten, how true are the following statements about yourself at work?

• “I feel out of tune with my coworkers.”
• “I lack companionship at my work.”
• “There is no one I can turn to in this organization.”
• “I feel left out.”
• “I don’t feel like I can talk honestly with anyone in this company.”

These were among the questions researchers asked 786 professionals and their bosses to help determine their sense of loneliness in the organizational culture, and then to correlate that result with their current job performance.¹

Recent studies show that a little more than half of us, at one time or another, experience periods of intense loneliness in our professional lives. Loneliness is not depression, shyness, or poor social skills, and it certainly isn’t introversion. It’s more a feeling of estrangement, of alienation—a sense of not belonging to a place or a culture. And the implications of having lonely people at work are big. Our sense of belonging on a team has a direct effect on our commitment to a task, sense of role clarity, and collaborative effectiveness.

We may find it a struggle to fit in while remaining true to ourselves—to be authentic—but hiding from who we are can alienate us not only from those we work with but also from ourselves. While teammates, bosses, and the larger society around us may pressure us to conform, often for seemingly good reasons, when we are not true to ourselves we can harm them as well as ourselves in the long run.

To be of the greatest value to ourselves, our teams, our families, and the world at large, we must instead strive to be who we are, share what we feel is the best of us, and manage, rather than conceal, our foibles. Forcing people into conformity has a high cost, as diversity of ideas is one of the greatest catalysts to innovation and a sense of self-worth. While building inclusion in the workplace can be a challenge, some simple actions can move us and others in the right direction, as we explore in this chapter.

Hiding Yourself at work

When we find ourselves isolated, not fitting in, we’re likely to increase our level of what the Deloitte Leadership Center for Inclusion calls “covering.”² That is, we intentionally conceal parts of who we really are. When we feel lonely at work, we may start to pretend to be someone else. And when we pretend to be someone other than who we are, we start to withdraw emotionally.

Loneliness can not only lead us to withdraw but also can affect our health.³ Feeling socially isolated is directly linked to increased blood pressure and increased risk of heart disease. Loneliness also negatively affects sleep quality, which affects cognition, which . . . You get the idea.

Here’s an example of what I mean: recently, I was asked to be a guest speaker at an event designed for executives of a big technology company. I wore a black suit. The very next day I spoke at a marketing group event of a Silicon Valley gaming company. Unsure of what to wear, I asked, and was told, “jeans and chucks.” And then, like an idiot, I asked, “What are chucks?” After I figured out what chucks were, that’s what I wore.⁴

This is a pretty benign example of “appearance covering.” We do it all the time when we accept a dinner invitation or go to the beach. We try to wear the right thing to fit in, or maybe just not stand out too much. We practice this kind of social covering so much so that, in the Deloitte study, 82 percent of workers stated that covering for appearance was “somewhat” to “extremely” important for professional advancement.

Dressing to fit in can often make us feel even more committed to the team and the mission. But we also often “cover” other aspects of our authentic identities. We hide not only our political opinions but also truths that deeply define us, such as our cultural histories, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, or even our age and any disabilities we might have. The following are comments from participants in the study on covering various aspects of their lives:

• Family obligations. “I was coached to not mention family commitments (including day-care pickup, for which I leave half an hour early, but check in remotely at night) in conversations with executive management, because the individual frowns on flexible work arrangements.”

• Socioeconomic background. “I didn’t always volunteer the information that I grew up very poor and that I was the first to go to college. It seemed like I wouldn’t be accepted because I always assumed everyone I worked with grew up middle or upper class.”

• Ethnicity. “I don’t want people to define me as an Asian, so I’ve been hesitant to participate in activities geared toward the Asian community.”

• Physical health. “I don’t associate with cancer groups, because I don’t want to draw attention to my medical status, disability, or flexible arrangements. People tend to look at me like I’m dying when they find out I have cancer.”⁵

However, as the Deloitte study revealed, when we feel like we can be more authentically ourselves, we care more about our work and hold stronger commitment to our company. When we feel that we cannot express ourselves authentically in identity, we feel inhibited in our ability to give our commitment fully to our work efforts.

As one respondent put it, “If I had the opportunity to do the kind of work I do at another firm with similar compensation, but could be more authentic without limiting my job security or chances for advancement, I’d switch in a heartbeat.”

We need to remember that partitioning our lives and identities is a trap. When we segment and partition our lives into work life, home life, sporting life, community-service life, etc., we deny the truth that our greatest strength often comes from integrating all our different and diverse network interactions and ideas into a unified and integrated whole. After all, the etymology of “integrity” is from the Latin integer, meaning wholeness, or the unit of one.

Tools for Combatting Isolation

Persistent loneliness often leads to an expectation of negative interactions and increased hostility. If we feel socially isolated at work, we begin to expect that isolation will persist—in other words, loneliness begets loneliness. We have to break the cycle. An important step toward this is recognizing a lonely feeling (“No one understands me” or “I don’t belong here”) as simply an emotional response to a circumstance, or to an individual. And we also need to recognize that we can choose other responses.

Even if we can’t conjure up a charitable thought, we can try instead to see the world from the other person’s lens, her point of view. When we work on our empathy, we gain greater emotional fluency, which in turn creates connection.

The Five-to-One Rule

As we escalate our leadership capacities, we need to understand that loneliness in the workplace isn’t a private and personal issue; it’s an issue of organizational culture. If people around us are emotionally withdrawing, it’s not their problem, it’s ours, and our company’s. Aside from direct and personal intervention, we should use a five-to-one rule: create a team interaction dynamic that builds a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative communication.

And by positive, I don’t simply mean saying, “That’s great!” Research tells us that supportive questions are even more powerful than supportive assertions.⁶ So the next time someone on the team has an idea we feel is valuable, we should ask a deepening question, such as “How did you arrive at that?” or “Who do you think we should talk with next to make this a reality?”

According to the research, negative comments and interactions are so powerful, toxic, and lasting, that it takes roughly five positive interactions to offset a negative one. Or, to put it another way, it’s easier to create a positive work environment by reducing (or eliminating) negative interactions than it is to try to combat the negative with five times the positive.

Fighting Against Pressure to Be Inauthentic

We often put pressure on ourselves to act in ways inconsistent with who we truly are, for the sake of others or out of fear of being ostracized. But sometimes it’s those around us who, intentionally or not, and often for apparently good reasons, pressure us to be inauthentic.

When my mom was first diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, her first impulse was to not tell anyone. She thought maybe people would see her as vulnerable, frail, or dying. I remember thinking, “That’s nuts!”

But it wasn’t crazy. It’s a common first reaction to getting such dire news. Instead, she decided to have a very open battle with lymphoma and, thankfully, was successful.

It’s quite common for people to conceal parts of their identity for fear of being stigmatized. At work people often hide their religion, political values, sexual orientation, health conditions, and maybe their preference for cross-dressing. People even conceal what might seem to be quite benign things, such as parental obligations to fetch a sick child from school or take them to a dentist appointment—all out of fear of being branded as not professional, not dedicated, or, most important, not like everyone else at work. It’s an effort to get along, to be part of the group, to fit in.

The fear is that, if our true identities are known, we’ll be stigmatized, and possibly ostracized, by people at work. Understandably, no one wants to feel rejected. The interesting thing about this expectation is that it’s completely unfounded, according to a fascinating study from Yale.⁷ In the study, researchers discovered that, overwhelmingly, people believed and expected that concealing parts of their identity that were unique or counter to the prevailing culture would make them feel a higher sense of belonging to the group, and in turn the group would be more welcoming and more inclusive to those who look and act like everyone else.

The study showed that actually the opposite is true: when we conceal parts of our identity that are core truths about what we believe and who we are, we start to retract from homogeneous groups. And when we hide personal truths and socially withdraw from a group, people around us sense it and begin to withdraw from us as well. It’s a reinforcing cycle.

Once we start to conceal personal identity traits, it also becomes harder to honestly and genuinely connect with others. The result is that we lose a sense of belonging, which is at the very core of one of today’s buzzwords: engagement.

If we want to feel like we belong where we work, we need to care more about the work we do. To bring out the best in people, we need a culture that not only allows, but actively encourages, expression of self, of who we are. And the very best bosses and leaders understand this by creating an environment of inclusiveness and acceptance, because those basic fundamentals of inclusiveness, social acceptance, and assuming the best in others are the building blocks for accelerating innovation.

Innovating Through Social Diversity

Innovation can come from many sources, but often it occurs when we diverge from the lines of thought of those around us, from being authentic and following our own ideas—it comes when we diverge from the pack. And, while we may think we are unique, often we are building on the divergent thinking of others who came before us.

Think of some of the most iconic ancient innovations: the wheel, the arrowhead, pottery. In each case someone knew how to make such a thing, because he was mentored by someone who was knowledgeable in the craft. Each learned a skill that enabled him to replicate a thing of value, hone his skills, and ideally advance the technology to a higher state—perhaps make the wheel lighter, the pottery more resilient to persistent heat.

But who knows how to craft a camera, or a computer mouse, or a compact fluorescent bulb? Indeed, no one person does. Each of these (and many more) current technological artifacts are concoctions of ideas. A point-and-click camera is (as author Matt Ridley puts it) a confection of ideas—silicon, microchips, plastics, lenses, batteries, various refined metals—all mashed together performing a feat of alchemy that represents a camera as we know it, to take snapshots at our children’s birthdays.⁸

Since it’s nigh impossible to claim sole credit for an innovation, we’re at our best when we recognize the deep contributions of all in the value chain that precedes—and follows—whatever we contribute to. The most innovative leaders know how to harness available technology, envision the potential future, and enlist others into action.

Paying the Cost of Conformity

While conformity may seem the safe and sound way to act and think around others, it has its cost. Imagine you are in a meeting, sitting around a table with seven other people, and the person running the meeting presents everyone with two cards, one for the left hand and one for the right. On the left-hand card is a line. On the right- hand card are three lines of differing lengths. You are asked to pick which line on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card.

The answer is obvious. Any fool can see the right answer. But each person, in turn, around the table picks the wrong line, the wrong answer.

Now it’s your turn. What do you do? Do you speak your mind? Speak the truth? It’s baffling that these people can’t see what you see so obviously. What’s wrong with these people? It makes no sense. Why did everyone else obviously choose the wrong answer?

About a third of us would agree with the rest of the group. Against our opinion, against what is so clearly obvious to us, we would reluctantly agree with everyone else’s wrong choice. These were the results of a series of psychology experiments conducted in the 1950s by Solomon Asch.⁹ In these experiments, naïve (uncoached) participants were placed alongside “confederate” (coached) participants. The confederates were coached to give incorrect answers intentionally at different points in the experiment. While 98 percent of the naïve participants correctly identified the matching lines, nearly 75 percent of them instead went along with the group, choosing the incorrect answers.

When the researchers later asked the naïve participants why they ignored what they knew was the correct answer and instead voted as the others in their group did, many said they feared ridicule from the group.

When we perform tasks or engage in activities because, as part of an organization, we go along with the idea that “we’ve always done it that way,” or because the person with the greatest seniority in the room suggested it, we’re acting out of conformity. Conformity can be a great thing—it can enable teams to soar and military groups to function seamlessly and efficiently, and allows decisions to be made faster. It means acting in accordance with social standards and conventions, which can offer safety, convenience, efficiency, and harmony within a society. For example, I’m certainly glad we have accepted communication and behavioral conventions over at air traffic control and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In fact, researcher Charles Efferson and his colleagues demonstrated that social conformity can present a higher rate of correct decisions and higher performance in specific tasks.¹⁰ Conformity is how we deal with the complexity of life, the tsunami of data and information we are presented with, and the unmitigated fire hose of media we are bombarded with. We look at what other people are paying attention to, looking at, and doing. And we do that. It’s much easier to follow social convention than to think for ourselves.

But it is not conformity but rather positive and creative deviance that drives change. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, at age forty- two, refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. In her own words, she was “tired of giving in.”

We are all vulnerable to conformity and, to stay on the creative edge while truly participating in group decision making, we need to be aware of our vulnerability to it. We need to cultivate healthy skepticism toward our own group, and to be willing to disappoint or surprise people in the name of being true to ourselves and for the sake of innovation. It’s the difference between belonging to a group and simply fitting in.

When we feel a strong sense of belonging, we feel enabled to be ourselves, wholly and authentically. That sense of belonging gives us better confidence to think and act authentically.

Forcing Conformity by Using Jargon

If we took a time machine back to the 1990s and visited American corporate culture, in addition to wide ties and blocky cell phones, we would also see the Apple Newton in action and fax machines widely in use. There was the Netscape IPO of 1995, Japan was the king of semiconductors, and the NASDAQ tipped over one thousand points.

We would also find people talking differently. They didn’t use the word “business model” widely. That term wouldn’t make its way out of MBA classes for a few more years, and people were still largely thought of as resources to be applied against goals, objectives, and strategies. According to Harvard business historian Nancy Koehn, people weren’t talking about “energy,” “passion,” or “purpose” in the way we do today.

Language certainly matters a great deal. The words we use when interacting with one another say a lot about what we believe and value. But I’ll argue that repetition and overuse of insider language—or bafflegab—can balloon into an enormous crutch. If we do a Google search on “bafflegab,” we find that it’s an informal, North American noun meaning “incomprehensible or pretentious language, especially bureaucratic jargon.” While playing with jargon can be fun—it’s the reason why the online game Business Buzzword Bingo exists—its use can undermine authenticity and lead to disaster, especially when we are forced to conform to its use.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in the 1980s Pacific Bell publicly abandoned a failed $40 million “leadership development” effort based on the work of Charles Krone, former aspiring mystic turned management consultant.¹¹ The training program attempted to get everyone in the organization to adopt new, and often fantastical, language to gain efficiency and speed.

During this expensive and failed experiment of confusion and lost productivity, “task cycle” was an invented term used to describe a system of managing a problem. Even the word “interaction” had its own, impenetrable, thirty-nine-word definition that employees had to understand.

Pushing people to speak and interact all the same way, as Pacific Bell did, is the equivalent of enforcing a mental dress code.

There are plenty of annoying popular business phrases out there. “Let’s not try to boil the ocean” means let’s not waste time on something that will take forever. Rowing to Australia would take a long time, too, but we don’t say that. Incidentally, the expression “boil the ocean” supposedly came from the humorist Will Rogers when he was asked how we should deal with German U-Boats during WWI. His answer was to simply boil the ocean, and he added that the details of how to do that are up to someone else.

And how did “out of pocket” come to mean unavailable? This phrase has several other meanings, including a financial one— reimbursable expense, as in the cost came “out of my pocket.” But, although I searched and searched, I found no satisfactory explanation for how it also came to mean unavailable. One source does say that this usage dates back to the early 1600s, although the Oxford English Dictionary found the earliest specific reference to it in a 1908 O. Henry story, “Buried Treasure.”¹²

“Over the wall” needs to be canned, too. It means to send something, like a document or a proposal, to a client or a vendor. But, metaphorically, it’s alienating. The expression suggests we’re dealing with someone foreign, even hostile. Why does it need to be a wall?

“ Low- hanging fruit” came out of the 1980s restructuring at General Electric. Peter Drucker had been hired by Jack Welch in the early 1980s to help get GE out of a down-cycle (damn, I did it myself!), and they worked together to try to remove corporate jargon from the conversation. Ironically, along the way they created more new terms in an attempt to destroy the old language. In addition to “low-hanging fruit,” that exercise also brought us the terms “rattlers” (meaning obvious problems) and “pythons” (meaning bloated bureaucracy).

“Burning platform” conjures images of Gandalf and the Balrog fighting over a crumbling bridge above a cauldron of fire. We should stop conjuring, and just use the simple, well- understood, time-honored word “urgent” instead.

The list goes on and on. Let’s keep this one: “ducks in a row.” I like it. It’s cute. It comes from the days before bowling alleys were automated, when humans had to place the bowling pins upright.

Whatever the common bafflegab in our organization, we should simplify our language. If an expression replaces one that is simpler and more familiar, and needs explanation to anyone outside our company, we should avoid using it.

Learning to Build Inclusion

Instead of conspiring to make everyone speak a special language as an act of conformity and to avoid hearing diverse voices, the authentic way to build teamwork is to work on building inclusion by embracing diversity.

On the playground at my daughter’s elementary school, at recess, there is something called the Buddy Bench. According to Annie, it’s where you can go and sit if you don’t have any friends to play with.

If you see someone sitting there, alone on the Buddy Bench, your job is to go over and invite the kid to play with you.

My first reaction to the thought of the Buddy Bench was that it sounded a bit like the No Friends Bench, that the act of sitting there was sad and lonely, and that walking over and inviting someone to play was an act of generosity and kindness. I thought that the whole scene of walking over and sitting there would be like social abandonment.

If you did have the courage to walk over, in front of the world, and take the hand of someone sitting on it and invite her to play with you, the two of you would be quietly ostracized as you played in a corner of the playground. At least that’s the way it played out in my mind. Maybe I’ve watched too many come- from- behind, underdog Disney movies.

But the way my daughter describes it, so matter-of-factly, there’s nothing odd or strange or uncomfortable about either going to the bench to sit, or walking over and inviting someone sitting there to play with you. By sitting on the Buddy Bench, she explains, it’s almost as if you are announcing that you are available to play. It seems the gesture of sitting there is more of an invitation. It’s like raising your hand and saying, “Hey, I’m free for something new. Anyone?”

There doesn’t seem to be any stigma associated with it. It’s all very straightforward. If you’re not sure what to do, sit on the Buddy Bench and pretty soon someone will come over and invite you to play. Annie says people don’t sit on the Buddy Bench for very long. Almost immediately kids get scooped off it by some kid or a group of kids, and run off immersed in an activity.

To me, this represents the epitome of environments of inclusion— an environment in which no one is permitted to be a pariah. The school has created a mechanism by which, if you feel lonely, lost, or simply unsure of what to do next, you make a gesture. That gesture of sitting on the bench says to the entire community you are feeling left out or simply disengaged, and the whole community sees this visual cue and reacts immediately.

It’s also a culture in which a call for help has no stigma associated with it. In fact, the inverse is true. Regular rotation through the Buddy Bench is perfectly normal and healthy, since that kid is going to get picked up by a new group and have new experiences.

But unwritten social rules say it is unacceptable for anyone to remain on the Buddy Bench for long. I imagine that someone’s lingering on the bench would be an unconscious cue that the community lacks leadership, or courage. The social contract would be broken if someone were left there hanging. Annie says it never happens.

If we’re concerned about someone’s lack of engagement, or professional isolation, in our work environment, we should be proactive about it. We can start by assuming that this person is at the company for a reason—that he deserves to be there. Then we need to recognize the cues: lack of contribution at meetings, unanswered e-mails, missed deadlines, lack of initiative, low dedication to work. We should then pick up the phone, or walk over to his cube, and invite him. Invite him for coffee. Invite his opinion. Invite him to contribute to our most valued project. Invite him to play.

Giving Credit and Accountability

If we really want inclusion and to promote authenticity, we must also share the credit for successes while making everyone accountable for her actions.

Paul Hiltz, the president of Springfield Regional Medical Center, whom I first introduced in chapter 2, might be one of the toughest interviews I’ve had, but for reasons you might not expect.

It’s not because he isn’t articulate. He is widely praised for his ability to clearly communicate a compelling vision of the future. His mind is sharp. His ideas are clear. His voice is calm and reassuring.

It’s not because he’s too busy to talk to me. He answers all of his e-mail personally and promptly, and gave me his personal cell phone number and encouraged me to call with any questions. I called him once without a scheduled meeting, and, after we said hello, he asked me if I had a couple of minutes to talk.

It’s not because he conceals key parts of his business that he can’t share. Not at all. Hiltz is known as constantly initiating projects of transparency, and building education campaigns to ensure that everyone clearly understands how the business works. He once hired financial consultants to conduct workshops to teach everyone how the health care business works.

And it’s not because he is inaccessible, tied up in the boardroom or in meetings. Quite the opposite, Hiltz spends almost all of his time in the hallways, having lunch with patients, or meeting families of patients. The staff describe him as being constantly visible both in the hospital and in the greater community.

The real reason Hiltz is such a tough interview is because most of the time, when I ask how he led a big process reinvention, or developed a remarkable financial turnaround, or constructed an entirely new service rollout in the hospital, he tells me I should talk to this department head, or that nursing administrator, or the other communications director. Every time he tells me it was really the other person’s doing, saying, “She took the lead on that” or “He made it happen; talk to him.”

So I talk with the people Hiltz points me to, and they all tell me the same thing: yes, they were part of the equation, part of the team, but they all point back to Hiltz. It’s Hiltz’s leadership, they say. They say everyone in the hospital is simply rallying around his clear vision of a comprehensive, high- quality health care environment— a health care system fully integrated with the greater community. Everyone understands the goal, and everyone is committed to the mission. One of the doctors in the hospital system described Paul as “a healing leader”—a leader who is able to heal wounds of distrust, to heal the lacerations of broken communication.

Welcome to a new style of open leadership—a leadership style that believes in flipping the approach to leading:

• Using influence, not coercion
• Focusing on collaboration instead of individual heroism
• Treating employees the way we want customers to be treated
• Instilling continuous, not episodic, habits of learning
• Giving, not taking, credit
• Assuming accountability, but also giving autonomy
• Building inclusive, not homogeneous, cultures

Paul Hiltz represents the epitome of an effective leader in the twenty-first century. He guides rather than directs, influences rather than commands, and encourages rather than threatens. He has managed to galvanize the entire organization around a higher goal by constantly giving credit, and the spotlight, to someone else.

By constantly giving credit where credit is due, Hiltz is also giving accountability. Accountability, if accepted and embraced, requires us to become fully present and focused to achieve excellence. For true excellence, quality of work, and quality of relationship, we must be wholly present and mindful. As we will explore next, before we can take action, we need to be mindfully aware of our circumstances and relationships.