Part 1: To be real, shall we ditch the role model ideal?

To truly embody authentic leadership, we need to look inside ourselves, not outside. An invitation to exploration.

In May 2023, a Forbes article titled “Authenticity: The Key to Great Leadership and How to Embrace It” quoted a shortage of authentic leaders and mentioned how society “still places value on conformity.” Having worked for 20 years in Human Resources and now as a coach, I wholeheartedly agree. Truly a societal problem, not only faced in the workplace and personal development.

Since childhood, we are educated to follow a set of norms and values, embodied by “role models”. Kids imitate the behaviours of parents and other reference persons and carry their patterns into adulthood - unless they work to overcome them, often a lifetime’s work.

Are you a role model or are you looking up to one? Probably both.

Believe me, when you work in Human Resources, there are plenty of things that you should or shouldn’t do, for the sake of being a role model.? Don’t be too this or too that, if you are too “human” and too compassionate with the employee you might be seen as soft and not professional, if you are too focused on important compliance matters you are easily seen as a robot without a heart. It’s an impossible feat and likely a reason why so many HR professionals are either in an identity crisis or close to burnout.? This experience led me to think that role models are not only outdated, they can be dangerous. Especially, if we pick the wrong ones.

We get introduced to or asked to become role models as prototypes of behaviours and values we should follow. Looking back at my career, it was my job to advertise certain role models.? In reflection of the then and now: If we are serious about authenticity and integrity (the most important leadership attributes according to surveys), we have to talk about role modeling and why it’s holding us back.?

Role Model - What’s in a name?

A role model is, per definition, someone to be imitated. There are reverse role models, too, and these are the ones that show how we should not behave. In essence, it comes down to playing a role, just like in theatre, but unfortunately, the curtain doesn’t close in modern days’ working life.

First, we assign role models from a place of “idealization” and desired perfection. The second aspect is an expectation towards individuals to imitate and conform to this behaviour. If you listen in the (now virtual) hallways of offices then you know when employees think a leader has created a new ”mini-me” of themselves. Often, the question is not how diverse a team is in terms of gender or heritage, but rather in the way they think, speak, discuss and embody leadership. If you don’t follow a specific?

(unspoken) pattern, chances are high that you see people who do, progress in their careers or get access to other opportunities and you don’t. A common corporate bias is a “can-do attitude” which leads employees to withhold critical questions - all to be seen as the desirable positive thinker. This is true for bigger corporates but also smaller family-owned businesses.

Role model thinking suggests: There is someone better than you. It feeds comparison-focus and self-doubt, both not instilling a healthy sense of performance. Nothing wrong with inspiration and visualization - imitation and conformity go too far.

Let’s take a look at an example. The ever-inspiring and knowledgeable Brene Brown has become somewhat of a spokesperson for vulnerability. Vulnerability is a key contributor to perceived authenticity, and Brown’s books and talks were on heavy rotation in leadership courses and business media.

What we have seen are leaders who suddenly turned vulnerable and were open to sharing their fears and failures, which wasn’t necessarily their strength before. While this is a great and needed development, it felt inauthentic and problematic to many, especially as a few months before the same leaders labelled others as “too emotional”. It raised the question of whether adaptation and showing the desired behaviour came from an honest, heartfelt place from a person who did “the work”. Needless to say some felt pushed to share a story that they might have not been ready to share.

Where there is hype, conformity will follow

If we show behaviours for the sake of it, and without having done work addressing our patterns, it is just an imitation, not authentic and does more harm than good. The self-proclaimed “servant leader” is another example. The servant leader became fashionable on Linked In in the last few years. Don’t get me wrong: servant leadership is a great approach to leadership and a positive development. It contributes to the imminent - and needed- paradigm change. If it becomes a label rather than a committed, intentional embodied action, I’d like to pause, though.?

It’s easy to jump on the hype wagon and copy what we think servant leadership behaviours are, rather than asking: who and what am I serving and why? Just asking “How can I help” doesn’t make a servant leader. Deep inquiry does.

I invite you to explore what your employees would say about you? Are you a servant leader? In what is this servant leadership rooted?? Is this you or what you’d like to be seen as? Again, I am not questioning any of you as a leader - it is an invitation to explore the role-model notions of leadership.

What is a “healthy” role model anyway?

The female role model I was presented with as a woman was the “hard-working woman”, the one who gives it all and super-optimizes so that they can be everything for everyone. That role model has done what’s necessary to stay fit and functioning (and if not, learned to pretend that all is fine!), to adapt to a world led by men by copying their behaviours.? And that takes a toll - I very much appreciate the hard work so many of us had to do as there was no other way presented to us, but there is a reason why many of them are burnt out or sick. To me, the tired, worn out, always-on, hard-working woman with her guard up is not a role model anymore. The kind, calm, curious one is now.

Another facet is the “Warrior”, the idealization of someone overcoming a societal or physical challenge that then is celebrated as an example of tenacity, strength, and positive thinking. It is more than ironic, if not infuriating, that the very structure that brought that “now role model” to fight in the first place and to overcome these challenges now uses their “success” for telling a story. A different variation of that is the “poor but still grateful” example that teenagers in a tantrum regularly get to hear or the disgruntled employee without a pay rise gets as a response from their manager. So, it’s not only about what the role models stand for but also how we use other people’s lives and glorify them.

Referencing “role models” is a key tactic in DEI strategies to increase representation. STEM, a field with low female representation is one of the areas where role modelling has been applied strategically through the appointment of female leaders. The International Journal of Stem Education published 2021 the following: ?“Although it may be tempting to make the role model seem like a super(wo)man in terms of what they have achieved, more is not always better in this respect because students may conclude “I could never do all that” and look elsewhere for a career.”

No matter how the role model narrative is twisted and turned, it’s hardly a healthy one.??

If we expect others to follow a specific role,? we ask them to conform and to fit in.? To make one fit in is different from inviting authenticity and belonging. It’s an open invitation to constantly compare ourselves and find ways to conceal our unique selves or never show it.? Externally, we intend to become like the other. Internally, we become disconnected.

It’s common “advice” to get inspired by a successful role model and copy the steps to get there, too. If you do this, you get that!? This is a pattern in career planning, but also in popular online marketing offerings. The thing is, it’s very hard to copy someone’s creative flow and might come across as inauthentic. Strategies can be very useful, but there is a thin line between the application of a strategy and code-switching.?

Erving Goffman wrote in 1956 in his groundbreaking book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”: “To the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”??

The big impact of masks on our health and our workplaces

The essence is that trying to become more authentic can mean we distance ourselves from our true selves. Our unique way of seeing the world fades and our talent comes less to the surface. We believe good leadership lies outside of ourselves and our innate capabilities are not good enough if we are different from that role model.

That not only results in a conformity problem ( there is no innovation where there is no individuality) but also fuels the?mental health epidemic, as this form of stress can cause health issues. The effect on workplaces is obvious: silent quitting, disengagement and feeling alienated. And - for the ones that aim to be progressive - working with a limited set of role models will likely advance you less than the ones who free themselves from such imitations of behaviors.?

Two other potentially harmful aspects of role modelling are the one-sidedness and that they are often very much connected to a certain period. The highly successful CEO can still be an absent father and the servant leader still has to lay off people in a 20-minute conversation. We only see parts of the person and not potential shadow aspects.?

That means that someone’s role model can be another person’s hell. There were people I admired early in my career and admit that I worked hard to become like them - it served me very well careerwise at the time. I learned later that these individuals were responsible for other colleagues not only being harassed but also retaliated for reporting it. If I would have been less blindsided by the success and how it served me, maybe I would have spotted that.?

In matters of time: yesterday’s icons are outdated as specific types usually work for a certain timeframe - or a certain leader.

A new paradigm

Authenticity and integrity remain a big ask to our leaders across society.? As we face failing return-to-office mandates and loud calls for a 4-day work week (see Gartner’s Future of Work report) alongside AI playing a more exposed role in the workplace, having effective and authentic leaders is critical. Where there is less human connection, the few remaining touchpoints are make-or-break situations. The future will bring more self-organized teams and new ways of collaboration. To achieve that, the old leadership models are of limited use. We will move away from “Pedestal Leadership” as Ruby Fremon,? who wrote the excellent book “ Potent Leadership”, called it. This old paradigm leads with a “sense of superiority” and a focus on role models and ideals rather than being inspired by the qualities of each individual and their “potency”.?

It is best to move away from imitating icons and start seeing what leaders are: humans that do what you humans do and are not per se “good” or “bad”.? Maybe it's healthier to stop looking up to people and diminishing our talents through that.? I like the way Coach Rasheed Ogunlaru phrases it: "Role models are only of limited use. For no one is as important, potentially powerful and as key in your life and world as you."??

As a start, the invitation to ask yourself, who am I truly as a person - and therefore leader-? and what qualities does my true self embody??