I’m a Celebrity… you can see me!

About this time of year I am afraid that Cooke Towers impressive media suite is taken over by gaffawing women who cackle with glee as minor ‘celebs’ are tortured for the nation’s entertainment with kangaroo testicles and critters that bite.  I can not pretend not to be rapidly drawn into these so called reality TV shows as I love watching people behave as they do.

The thing that seems so clear to me this year is that people are so very transparent and that the public respond better to those who they feel are being genuine, even if they are being genuinely stupid!  People who play games are judged and tortured for the viewers’ entertainment. 

I know that this is far removed from real life in so many ways but I think our desire to have people ‘be themselves’ is a very deep one, and so too is our ability to see through manoeuvrings.   The thing is, in the world of work, we often don’t get any real choice about who tells us to do what, but we do control how much of ourselves we give in response to them.  Real leaders don’t try to manoeuvre people, despite office politics.  They do what they believe to be right; they tell the truth as they see it and  say how they feel.  We may not like or even agree with these messages but we will be inclined to trust them. 

So rule number 1 of authentic leadership is “Don’t be clever, be true”

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”  Mark Twain

“Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.”  Mark Twain

“A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”  William Blake

Tags: authentic, honesty, Leadership, politics, truth

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 10:09 and is filed under Business Change, Communication, Leadership, Personal Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.