Julia Middleton's Thoughts on Leadership

On a recent trip to the US, I don’t think I met anyone who did not use the word authentic in some way. ‘Authentic’ was coupled with loads of words – “authentic leaders”, “authentic brands”, “authentic messages”, “authentic ideas”… It raises the question of what purpose ‘authentic’ serves in such pairings. And more than this, other new words seem to be slipping in around it too. Words like “appear” and “create”. Yet it is very seldom that “reveal” gets in there.

The objective seems to be how to appear to be authentic. The view is that we should accept that authentic is an illusion, but an important illusion which needs to be created. And this in the context that we are addressing an audience, whether they are customers, stakeholders or citizens, that has largely lost the ability to discern what is authentic anyway. Given that we are often presented with leaders who claim that one identity after the next is the really authentic one, it’s not surprising that we begin to lose our ability to discern the real one.

As one new authentic version appears, no-one seems to spot that its very presence puts in doubt the previous authentic version (and indeed this one too). When the leader cries, is he or she authentic? Is authenticity only revealed in the toughest of times, when a leader gets into a fight, a real scrap?

Then the other word that slips in near to authentic is “moments”, and that’s the finale. Is authenticity revealed in moments, or is it in fact unveiled over time and over a period that the moments have little impact on? Except very occasionally to dramatically destroy it in one stroke!