Leaders Need An Impression Management Detox

I’ve recently had a very interesting conversation with Heather McGowan about Psychological Safety for her upcoming book. One of the questions that rose up was around identity and the relationship between the concept of psychological safety and the individual. My first instinct was to say there was none, as it’s a group concept, not an individual one. On closer inspection, that comes from my own desperation to protect the definition of it being the engine behind good team dynamic and not some other ill-understood pop-psychology concept, so I concluded I am guarding it at the risk of not being intellectually curious and open-minded so I gave myself a talking to :)

The result was that I was able to look at the relationship between team and leaders and psychological safety and impression management. The latter is damaging to the former and for leaders to achieve a team where they are safe and secure and therefore magically productive, they need to minimize the need to not appear ignorant, negative, intrusive or incompetent at all costs and minimize it not only amongst the team members but within themselves. 

At People Not Tech, we’ve spent a lot of research time on working out the importance of the topic and it is why we have chosen to include “Impression Management Alerts” as one of the main areas of a leader’s dashboard - because not keeping an eye on it would be irresponsible when building the right culture in the team. 

Now while PS is a group dynamic concept, impression management is deeply connected to one’s sense of self. 

In the context of the team, we are looking at the interaction between several senses of self if you will, and their ability to find ways to take risks collectively, so the value of training themselves to avoid impression management together is clear, the outside risks being removed, but when it comes to the leader of the team, should they stop impression managing, the risk landscape is different so the value of doing so is a lot more intangible and quite frankly, petrifying to most. 

So is it then feasible to believe the team can arrive at a state where they do no impression management with each other and are psychologically safe, while their leader managed neither of those? The practical answer is “yes” in fact if we take a productivity and project-based view - it is highly possible to have psychologically safe teams lead by leaders who still impression manage and are not safe themselves, but if we look at the bigger picture and the goal is not to make one project successful, but the entire organization healthy and competitive, then no, long term that will be untenable and sooner or later leaders themselves will have to have stopped impression managing and most times that may mean getting back to being part of real teams hence why I go on and on about Psychological Safety At the Top.

During our professional lives, we all have to build “reputations” - effectively another name for a personal brand- and they rightfully ought to exist, how else would we know to measure and model those around us, but it’s when it comes to defending them, that the manner in which we do it, becomes the clincher.

As with anything else that we build with hard work, we become very invested in guarding it and ensuring its safety, and as such, the ideas of our own professional selves we have toiled to offer to others, are no exception. 

If you’ve spent a decade defining yourself as being X, Y, and Z and demonstrating that to every Joe and Jill, it’s little wonder that you’re spending the rest of your professional life defending that X-Y-Z image at all costs, even if it some times means you have to bite your lip, not offer ideas or criticism, not ask questions, not engage with your colleagues and generally forgo authenticity all together. 

So what’s the answer then? As anyone who ever read me either about people topics or Agile may have noticed, I’m not a fan of just pointing at problems and laughing. I don’t think anyone should write about an issue without even attempting to give suggestions to fix it. I definitely stand by that, we need ideas on how to change for the better, but “model vulnerability”, “be 100% open and honest and don’t do politics” or “be your authentic self” is just telling people to stop impression managing which quite frankly is as effective as telling anyone to “stop being an a-hole”.

The skeptics are right to think “It’s all right for you lady to talk about bravery and honesty but you don’t know what effects that would have on my mortgage”. 

Often times, when you spend your life repeating the same self-evident truths about people, it’s easy to dismiss the above as non-courageous and carry on hoping one day everyone will wake up and magically stop thinking all this talk of “purpose” and “positivity” or “empathy” and “humanity at work” is just fluff but instead see it as the only bit that matters, but if we’re honest, we know that will never happen so we have to collectively substitute it with the hard work of untangling the organizational mess we have our people in, and validating then de-programming a complex array of feelings brought about by a culture of insecurity and fear.

Acknowledging that leaders are even further from being Psychologically Safe and therefore productive, because they are not in teams and a lot more addicted to fervently impression managing, and then replacing direct advice to them that makes them feel even more insecure, with an approach that helps them see the bigger picture, may be the way to go and I urge anyone reading this who is invested in the organization as a whole, or the leaders as individual, to never dismiss the perceived risk and always wonder “is what I’m coaching now doable, is it something this leader can do or is it so far against their need to impression manage that it won’t work?”. 

Messaging that’s disconnected from what it feels like in the trenches does no one any good. If we stop to think about it, everyone has a boss. Much as we like the idea of never having one. Everyone answers to someone even if it’s not higher management but a spouse, the stakeholders or (in the Queen’s case) God (?!?). 

So if we shouldn’t just tell leaders to “listen to feedback”, “be always open”, “be empathic”, “be positive”, “be vulnerable” or “be truly human at work” then what should we say? What can they do that will help them create the context for all of the above to be possible?

I think we need to change the narrative and instead tell them to: 

“Be a better version of yourself”

Most naturally gifted adulting leaders would have arrived at this themselves. If you look at the top performers of the business world, they are not unlike athletes when it comes to the discipline of having found -and obsessively kept- habits that make them better physically and mentally too. Asking people to be compassionate or kind towards their team when they have no idea what that stands for in their day-to-day life is pointless. Asking them to be empathic or patient when they do none of that at the weekend won’t work. Telling them to be positive and practice gratitude at work to increase resilience and flexibility while they have no context of the benefits to their personal lives, is a waste. By contrast, if more leadership coaches thought of themselves as overall personal trainers and kept a holistic view of exercises for the body and the mind, the effects would immediately be felt at the level of that leader’s team.

“Think big”

“Think of the grand scheme of things and where your sense of self-worth at large is, in this new economy of the future of work where humanity matters”.  

Helping leaders remember where this is all heading at all times, why the need for faster and non-sequential ways of work is there, why AI is going to eat the lunch of anyone devoid of deeply human attributes, how the world economy is changing, etc, keeping them connected to the large picture of the world helps them remember the value of non-impression-management as they comprehend there’s an exchange that needs to happen between perceived immediate security and long term security.  

“You are not your organization”

"Build your own brand and your identity outside of that of the company you’re in. Build a voice in your industry, have a point of view. Use social media, write, speak up." 

This is not to say leaders can’t or shouldn’t be immersed in a sense of collective purpose and be invested in communicating that sense of intense ideal alignment and ultimately belonging to the team, far from it. This is only to say that a healthy relationship with the enterprise means they can be that invested while remaining conscious of their value outside of that as well. Building on that value has double merit - it reduces “impostor syndrome” and it acts as a safety net that allows leaders to minimize impression management and replace it with authentic interactions because they are aware of their place and status in the industry or the community and not only the enterprise. 

“You are human and you are awesome. Show it.”

"Flaunting who you are as a person - what your likes and dislikes are, where your hobbies, interests, and passions lie, what matters to you and what you’re invested in, only serves to round up your image as a human."

This acts both as an antidote to impression management and as a constant reminder that there is no need for the dissociation most of us engage in between the work persona and the “real-life me”. Sadly, it’s a common stance at work that leaders can’t show weakness and that being human is being mortal and therefore a weakness. Mortals have feelings. Mortals have a life outside the business suit. Telling their team that they are taking guitar lessons doesn’t make them any less of a powerful leader any more than admitting they can’t swim or that they eat whole bars of chocolate when they binge Netflix. It makes them human and relatable and interesting and fun. And it also makes their teams want to be human in return and open up. 

“Team up!”

"Work on the team you’re in becoming a real team (again?) be it to benefit from the power in the numbers and the magic of the group".

I realize I sound like a broken record on this and I’m ok with it. Leaders are not part of teams. They are insular islands who at times come together with other islands so they spend time in a confined space and do nothing but impression manage. They go to these gatherings and spend all of their time consumed by fear and “impostor syndrome” desperately trying not to appear incompetent, negative, intrusive or ignorant. With management or board meetings that are closer to an eerie press conference than a google blue-sky design session, leaders have no place to engage openly and create. This needs changing most urgently to even attempt to impression manage in at least one space. 

The only impression leaders should give is that they are courageous visionaries willing to fight dragons to clear obstacles for their people whom they trust and love, and that shouldn’t need any managing at all as it should be the sheer truth.