5 Lessons in 2023 on Authentic Vulnerability...and Vulnerable Authenticity. (or why it took a dying professional friend to teach it!)

Preamble to 5 Lessons in 2023: As we find the old year evaporating and the new year upon us, the following reflections are both authentic and - frankly- professionally vulnerable. This actually could become a "Manifesto for Authenticity" if - in its reading - the lessons inspire you, your team, colleagues, friends, family to consider adapting and adopting. Let me know how you plan to lead with authenticity and vulnerability in 2024.

Lesson One: Death, Dying, Dignity with Vulnerable Authenticity.

The sense that it takes a dying man to understand the value of life could not have been any clearer in 2023 - watching a close professional friend accept the realities of his diagnosis - a certain fate caused by ALS' unforgiving stealing of body and then mind. A former ordained minister turned senior executive shared his beliefs, writings, studies, and ultimately the realities of being vulnerable and authentic in a time when both are highly expected but rarely respected, when both are sought but few can deliver, when death - rattling at the door - suddenly defines the worth of humanity. If ever we need to take the risk of describing our authenticity in the workplace, in transactions, in communities and civics - it would be now.

Regardless if its when we are fully alive or facing our mortality, your true identity should always be authentic. However, the more authentic we are, somehow others become the more suspicious at best or confrontational at worse. Vulnerability and authenticity are not weaknesses; each in their own right defines the strength of us - and when combined exposes the force of nature that can "GSD" (described below).

Lesson Two: Saluting a 100 Year Old World War II Veteran.

My father-in-law turned 100 year's old earlier this summer - celebrated with friends and families across every generation of his life, across every role that he had taken in his professional, religious, civic, sports, and community century of living a "life well lived." And then he passed as he had lived his life - with dignity, with authenticity, with vulnerability - having seen the destructive power of World War II and come home to East Tennessee to pick up where he had left off.

He was a mentor to anyone willing to sit and have a meal, a golf coach in his 80s to high school players, a distributor of thesaurus and dictionaries to kids in the poorest of mountain towns, a quiet philanthropists, a son and a brother and a father and a husband and a man of strong values that would cry when the National Anthem was played.

He wrote - literally - every few days in a series of spiral bound over the counter school notebooks what happened each month and each year - from his personal and professional life to the world's biggest stories and the most important events that impacted him. It was as if he kept the journal - sitting stacked in a drawer on the right in his desk - to remind himself of how the world supposedly changed - but never did, and to remind us that history can be repetitive as well as instructive.

His hands, his body, his mind were huge - but his heart and spirit were authentically vulnerable to those with less, those with challenges, those coming up, and those of the next generation. If there ever was a requiem for a World War II soldier, it was appropriately played for my father-in-law and the veterans (men and women) that stood for being authentic.

Lesson Three: Inauthentic and Unauthentic Leadership Makes for Bad Partners, Terrible Legacies

The details are not necessary to tell the story of realizing when a partner or partners are willing to sacrifice their own careers, resources, and even their own people to hide an individual as well as collective inability to be authentic. Once the poison of telling the "lie" enough - how others are not supportive of the mission, not engaged to appreciate the objectives, not informed to make the commitment - then everything else becomes negatively vulnerable to the downfall of the goal.

Organizations, institutions, communities - public, private, philanthropic - require an unbridled setting for vulnerability authenticity if big hurdles are to be overcome, big opportunities are to be achieved, big risks are to be measured. And yet, still in 2023 - for various reasons - leadership in the C-Suite - often cannot connect the dots of how their own weaknesses - viewed in the mirror as strengths - can ultimately impact the lives of those most inspired to transform the operations, work the hardest to create the strategic relationships both internal and external, invest the resources and funds to launch the proof of concept into action.

Sad but true, each time an inauthentic leader steps into the role of being unauthentic - it ruins the future for the next set of leaders that not only have to "clean up the lies" but unleashes doubt for other senior executives, staff, employees, and partners in the institution's ability. It is time to root-out liars and other forms of bad partners that are neither authentic nor willing to be vulnerable - even in one-on-one settings - about their skills, capabilities, intentions, and objectives. If a man cannot look you in the eye with full honesty, full openness, then you need to walk away immediately!

Lesson Four: Old Friends - Having Known You Since Elementary School - Can Be Trusted with Authenticity and Vulnerability. (Meaning: Know Your Friends in the Professional and Personal Worlds).

Upon returning home from nearly 40 years gone, I immediately found a group of men that I have known since elementary school - or in other scenarios - some from middle and high school - that wanted to walk every Sunday morning here in Houston and then grab coffee afterwards. Started with a handful, the "Kolter Guysters" has now reached 14+ depending who is in from out of town, who has grandchildren duty, who is traveling to Italy or Austin.

Once an article was published - distributed to over 180,000 readers in magazine form - and then highlighted on Facebook, expected and unexpected "applicants" emerged. But when it became a local news story with the ABC affiliate in Houston - before being released and shown on 100 affiliates across US as a so-called "national feel good story" about men being authentic and vulnerable, a new lesson emerged for not just myself but my companions, wives and families, anyone that read or heard the story.

Why? Because men in their 60s often do not have a core group of friends with whom they can confide about their health, their marriages, their kids, their dying parents, their regrets and their successes, any number of reasons - according to research found by Googling "studies on vulnerability in older generation of men ."

When the producer for the ABC affiliate called to schedule filming the walk and interviews, she asked over and over again "...what is it that you guys talk about while walking and then at your coffee that makes this so incredible...?" When I defined our one-on-one or small group conversations, it was about being vulnerably authentic - and not being concerned about judging or loss of confidence. Some conversations carry over to texts or more personal offline discussions for good reason.

And yes there is a level of humor - raw and 'old-daddish' and inappropriate - but that keeps us a bit on our toes as well as grounds us in being guys when the topics become a bit too deep. There are also conversations - what I call the "Warm Up" - about movies, articles, restaurants, travels, the better shoes for walking with bad knees and hips, stretching and a gentle reminder that a few of us seem to walk at the speed of turtles.

Whether you are in the corporate or non-profit sector, high in the leadership ranks or an entrepreneur, a staff member or an employee, male or female or LGBQT - get a group around you that is vulnerable and authentic as that will be the best "exercise for your core" so you can do what is necessary to manage what life often brings us.

And Lesson Five: Time to Get Shit Done. No More Research, No More Studies, No More Reports.

If you, your team, colleagues, partners, investors, members of your organization or institution, all the other people affiliated with your mission and objectives are not prepared to GSD in 2024 - then step off the field for awhile and only return when so ready. Seriously.

Jokingly, I have declared that as "Chairman" of the GSD Party, we are looking for others that are ready to pick up a shovel or an oar and get to work. And as the "chairman" of your company, organization, community - you should be ready to GSD in 2024, correct?

However, if you question other's authenticity about GSD, if you hint or spread the question "who is really behind them, what is it that they REALLY want to do", Stop it. If you simply cannot value that an individual or another team is motivated by progress, by implementing what has been studied over and over, by finally fixing what needs to be fixed, then you are an example of what I have coined as a member of the "Every Inefficiency Has A Constituency" Party.

And yet there truly is an "Elephant in The Room" issue that has to be discussed - there are those in both our business and civic sectors that make lots of money off of protecting inefficiencies, protecting their so-called "rice bowl" even if it is to the detriment of everyone else. Their "inefficiencies" are personal, financial, racial, and/or political. The Elephant is one of - if not - your biggest hurdle in almost every decision that has to be made in 2024. Someone(s) or some entity does NOT want you to succeed, and is willing to do almost anything to see that happen.

Here is a little secret about GSD: it is fact-based and there are no secrets! With so much access to data, analytical tools, shared information among peers and competitors, and other forms of "IYKYK" (look it up...) - then the reality is that the longer you push back on GSD, the more expensive to the bottomline and to your overall goals. Want to run out the clock on your time in charge or at the helm, leave the GSD workload to someone else? Really?

How do you sort this out? Recognize that no human can leave their motivations, their biases, their own needs at the doorway before entering the room. Best get them to be authentic, transparent, and vulnerable about their self-interests as GSD will happen faster with better results once done. Lets make 2024 the Year of Enlightened Self Interest !

Extra Bonus Lesson from 2023: Benjamin Franklin was One Smart Man.

This generation of young leaders - in the corporate, entrepreneurial, civic, and philanthropic sectors - have fully embraced that we CAN do well while also do good-works. That we can be profitable but not at the expense of someone else. That we should have communities among us that are not just surviving but thriving. That being resilient is not only for those that can afford it but for every person in our neighborhood, our community, our organization and our firm.

With best wishes for the New Year - may we all embrace authenticity and vulnerability as the strengths each is to our self-interest and our common goals. To work together and/or invest in our initiatives in authenticity - especially in Future Proofing America - reach out via direct message.