The Perceived Power of Charisma

More times than not in those situations, we have been blinded by the effects of charisma. Charismatic people are those people who excite us. They draw others into their orbit. We as followers get emotionally excited and may skip asking the probing questions or looking for the rest of the story. A charismatic leader appears to create a climate in which people can and do move metaphorical mountains in terms of creating new products or turning around a business. For example, both Jack Welch and Steve Jobs have delivered extraordinary results over a long period of time, and popular opinion would describe both as charismatic. Both Jobs and Welch have also been on the covers of every business magazine and have become celebrities in their own right, like Taylor Swift and Bono.

How much of their business success was due to charisma? We assume that their charisma was one of the keys to the phenomenal success of their companies. That intuitively makes sense. It is also hard to miss charisma. Here is what happens in our minds. We see two facts: The leader is charismatic and the company is successful. The two things are both happening so we tend to assume a connection. However, as I learned in my first research methods class, correlation does not equal causation. Just because two things are happening at the same time does not mean that one of them caused the other.

Business outcomes in particular are hard to link directly to leadership behaviors. Huge factors like what is going on in terms of the overall economic environment and the relevance of your product or service to what is happening at that moment in history all come into play. The role of charisma in leadership success is far from clear when we dig into the evidence.

In the '80s and early '90s, everyday people could not even name the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies. Celebrities were mostly entertainers. Things are different now. Business leaders are public figures, and the perceived power of charisma has escalated. But when we subject the importance of charisma in leadership effectiveness to rigorous investigation, we see a mixed bag at best. Highly successful leaders may or may not be charismatic. But it is easy to assume that charisma is more important than it is in this visual, digital era.

So we can't assume that charisma causes success. How does charisma relate to authenticity? People follow people they perceive to be authentic. However, sometimes those perceptions of authenticity change over time, and we see, just as my client did, that people are not who we thought they were. They reveal themselves over time, and we have all been deceived. Often, the leader's personal charisma has masked character flaws that could have been seen if we had investigated further.

Here comes the tricky part. Authentic leaders are not necessarily charismatic. Charismatic leaders are not necessarily authentic. Charisma can help leaders accomplish great things. But it's also true that leaders who lack charisma accomplish great things every day. In the United States, we tend to give too much credence to charisma. We love a good show. We enjoy the charismatic leader and are always fascinated with an interesting character who makes us feel positive emotions.

There is no conclusive research that tells us that charismatic leaders are more effective than noncharismatic leaders. To the contrary, Jim Collins described Level 5 leaders in his influential text Good to Great ² as humble and hard working. His study of CEOs who successfully transitioned a company from mediocrity to greatness did not find that the charisma of the leader really mattered. This point of view was confirmed in Collins's most recent study, fully explained in Great By Choice.³ He compared companies that thrived under unfavorable and ambiguous market conditions with their competitors in the same space who did not thrive. Charisma was not found to be a differentiating leadership behavior. Across the companies that thrived, the consistent leadership behaviors were fanatic discipline, productive paranoia, and empirical creativity. These factors are far less sexy than charisma. I have never had a client get overexcited about a potential boss's discipline, paranoia, or empirical creativity!

The word charisma has roots in ancient biblical texts with multiple references in the old and new testaments. The root word of charisma means divine, extraordinary, or like the gods. Max Weber, the influential German sociologist, was the first to bring the idea of charisma into the discussion regarding human behavior in social groups with his foundational text titled The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.⁴ Weber saw charisma as a special personality characteristic that made certain people extraordinary, and those charismatic people were able to change the world for the better. In his view, charismatic people have exceptional powers and should be revered. The evidence of charisma was that followers were loyal and revered the leader. This early twentieth-century view still affects us today.

I often find that my normal clients with great qualities like fanatic discipline who are accomplished accountants, engineers, and attorneys become overwhelmed when they think of becoming a great leader. They assume that being a great leader requires a huge presence and an ability to draw people like a magnet. They are confusing great leadership with charisma. We have all seen too many films of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy. King's “I Have a Dream” speech and Kennedy's audacious promise that we would take a man to the moon and return him safely are extraordinary moments in American history. However, we have talked about the charismatic side of leadership and the big moments way too much in our attempts to develop leadership in the classroom. Being an authentic leader requires a daily, consistent discipline that could very well look boring at times. Neither King nor Kennedy maintained such a powerful presence all of the time. Both of them got up every morning and stumbled around like the rest of us.

Two Flavors of Charisma

Charisma can have a dark side, as both Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden could be described as charismatic according to Weber's definition. Remember, according to Weber, the evidence of charismatic leadership was possessing devoted followers. It is rather ironic that 70 years later we have metrics to measure followers with our digital media tools such as Twitter and Facebook. What would Max Weber say about that? In order to gain insight, current social science research examines the dynamics among a leader's followers. In other words, emphasis is placed on how the followers interact with one another, not just how they view and interact with the leader.

As you will learn in this section, it is important to ask several questions about the dynamics among a leader's followers. Robert House and Jane Howell⁵ distinguished between two types of charismatic leadership. They called one type of charismatic leadership “socialized” and the other type “personalized.” We will call these two flavors or types of charismatic leadership the greater good (GG) vs. greater me (GM). The GG charismatic leaders lead the overall enterprise, the collective, toward a better future. The GM leaders may be using the same language as the GG leaders, but their motives are very different. GM leaders generally move toward enhancing themselves, at the expense of the collective if necessary.

Detecting and understanding the motives of others is nearly impossible. Understanding our own motives can be challenging enough. Real people are not pure GG or pure GM leaders. Leaders are like all real people. We are all a mix of looking out for ourselves and looking out for others and the overall good of the collective. Some leaders may be 90 percent looking out for the greater good and 10 percent greater me. Others may be 80/20 in the other direction. You can see there's an infinite number of hybrid possibilities. Given all of this complexity, how do we make use of the distinction between the two types of charismatic leaders?

Social scientists Paul Varella, Mansour Javidan, and David Waldman⁶ took a stab in a thought-provoking academic paper. They started with the following working hypothesis: The impact of socialized (GG) charismatic leadership on the ways in which people interact with one another is very different from the way in which personalized (GM) charismatic leadership impacts interactions on work groups. So instead of looking at how charismatic leadership impacts followers one-on-one, the authors strived to apply a broader lens and study how charismatic leaders impact the ways in which all of the followers relate to one another. Simply put, what kinds of team and interpersonal interactions and overall tone do these two types of charismatic leaders impact among all of their followers?

The authors identified three personal qualities of all charismatic leaders and then differentiated between GG and GM leaders, based on how all of those qualities played out in the group level of analysis. Three personal qualities shared by all charismatic leaders are persuasive visionary communication, clear read of the overall situation, and self-confidence.

Both types of charismatic leaders communicated vision in a persuasive way. However, GG leaders were more likely to involve people in crafting the vision. People on the team actually related and owned the vision as is evidenced by consistent referencing of the ideas in the vision. Individuals have different takes on why different parts of the vision really matter. In contrast, teams who followed a GM leader reference the leader more than the ideas.

In my own client work, I've seen this play out. One executive team that I worked with mentioned the name of their leader (who was not present) 88 times in a 90-minute meeting. So the tip here is to notice how often the team mentions and invokes the name of the leader vs. addressing the ideas, and more important how to realize the vision in their conversation.

The second quality that all charismatic leaders of both types possess is a clear read of the overall situation. Leaders in business are constantly reading the external environment (or marketplace) and how well the internal organization is equipped to be successful in the marketplace. GM leaders tend to emphasize an “us vs. them” mentality in regard to competitors. Hence, GM leaders are more threat based in the way they talk about business issues. GG leaders are more inclined to view difficulties in the marketplace as challenges in which the overall enterprise can become stronger.

Let's look at an example to make sense of this. Imagine a small town that has two primary car dealerships. For decades, the town has had a Ford dealership and a Toyota dealership. All of a sudden, a Mercedes dealer has come into town. According to this theory, a GM leader would rally the troops to prevail against the new Mercedes dealer, the overt threat. A GG leader would approach it in a different manner. A GG leader would be more likely to emphasize things like how to use the event of the newcomer in the marketplace as a catalyst to improve the way their organization serves customers. The emphasis would be on strengthening the business to deal with the threat as opposed to the threat itself.

The third quality is self-confidence. We all display confidence or the lack thereof in a myriad of ways. Our sense of self-esteem is the backstage side of the way we humans display confidence. In other words, if we are confident externally, we experience higher self-esteem in our own heads and hearts. However, self-esteem can be high and fragile or high and stable.⁷ If people have high, stable self-esteem, challenges come from the situation or from other people and internal self-esteem is not affected by those challenges. In contrast, those with high, fragile self-esteem are thrown off by those who challenge and disagree with them.

In practical situations, leaders who display very controlling behaviors are often acting out of a need to protect their fragile self-esteem. As long as they can control things, they can maintain their fragile but high sense of self-esteem. GG leaders actually invite disagreement and alternative views. Alternative views are not a challenge to their self-esteem. In contrast, GM leaders are more apt to shut down challenges to their thought process and promote one view exclusively, which is usually their own or one that makes them comfortable. In the real world, this plays out in hiring decisions. GM leaders tend to hire and surround themselves with people who are less experienced and won't ever be capable of assuming their role. GG leaders tend to hire and surround themselves with people who are as smart as or smarter than they are.

In summary, charismatic leaders vary in their emphasis toward the greater good or their emphasis toward the greater me, or self-enhancement. To be sure, both types of charismatic leadership can look the same. However, a clever follower should be alert to three things. First, how exactly does the leader's self-confidence play out in terms of whom he or she surrounds him- or herself with? Second, you should also be alert to how much the ideas in the vision are referenced vs. the “visionary” leader. Finally, notice how your leader talks about threats and challenges. Subtle differences in language can be clues to significant differences in the leader's internal wiring. Listening carefully to those subtle differences will decrease the probability of getting taken in by a GM boss.

Now, we will move on to the use of questions as powerful tools. If you really want to understand another person, you have be skillful enough to have conversations that matter. There is no better way to protect yourself than by really understanding your boss and your colleagues at a deeper level.

Conversations That Matter

I always get nervous when one of my clients gets super excited about an opportunity to work with a potential boss. There is one clue that I am looking for, and if I see it, I ask questions that are no fun for me to ask and no fun for the client to answer, in order to burst their bubble and help them see things more clearly. The clue is if the client does not see any weaknesses in a potential boss. If the client cannot see any potential downsides in the boss or in working for the boss, the client has not been thinking clearly and is being driven by excitement.

There are no perfect bosses. You know how this goes. You are really excited about an opportunity and you just “clicked” with a potential boss. You left the meeting feeling on top of the world. You are impressed with that person's knowledge, sense of humor, and overall presence and energy. You are just wowed.

These situations always remind me of the early stages of romantic love, long before “he won't pick up his shoes.” Over time, you come to realize that the boss you were so excited about working for took credit for one of your best ideas, or pushed you to hire someone you did not want to hire. This boss is not necessarily a GM leader or even a bad boss, just not the perfect boss.

These situations are not romantic, and the next phase of your career could be damaged by going to work for the wrong person. It is not always easy to break up with a boss and move on. Seeing your boss and other people as clearly as possible is the best defense and offense in the world of work. If you can't see any weakness or potential downside with a boss, you are not seeing the person clearly yet. You must ask questions, listen carefully, and observe, as opposed to just being wowed and being certain that this will be the best boss ever.

In this section, I cover specific questions and methods of focused behavioral observation. Both the questions and observational methods are designed to help you start conversations that matter. Use your curiosity to have conversations that go below the level of superficial chitchat, which can help you avoid following the wrong leader. Having honest conversations that matter will also make you a more authentic leader. This notion of starting conversations that matter is from the work of the influential leadership and systems theorist Margaret Wheatley. Here is an excerpt from her 2002 poem titled “Turning to One Another”⁸ that captures the intention and approach to interacting with others that will help you become a more authentic leader as well as avoid following the wrong leaders.

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

Talk to people you know.

Talk to people you never talk to.

Be intrigued by the differences that you hear.

Expect to be surprised.

Treasure curiosity more than certainty.

How many conversations have you had in the last week that were memorable? How many have you had that you can even remember? It is easy to go through your workday on autopilot and discuss the weather, the bad food, or what event your kids are going to over the weekend. There is absolutely nothing wrong with polite chitchat. It has its place. We must also make room in our lives for real conversations that matter. If you desire to be an authentic leader and to follow other authentic leaders, you must be brave enough to start such conversations. Conversations that matter go below the surface of things. We run the risk of being surprised. These conversations take energy and attention, and are also the only way to create substantive relationships in the workplace.

Here is an example. I was conducting an offsite with a team of high-performing manufacturing leaders. Their then-new president is an extreme athlete in his post-40 life and had been a hero on the battlefield in his youth. He strikes quite an intimidating figure and is smart as a whip. He is a man of few words, a man of substance, and few would describe him as overtly charismatic. He is the kind of guy who grows on you.

Presession interviews with the team revealed that they were struggling with his leadership and did not know where he was coming from. He decided to be brave enough to have a conversation that mattered with the entire team during the meeting. He opened up with the fact that the interpersonal side of leadership had always been difficult for him as he was more comfortable with ideas and numbers. Then he said: “I want us to figure out how to work together more effectively during the next few days. I know I am better at one-on-one conversations than talking in a group like this. So, I know that in order to be the most effective team that we can possibly be, I need to spend time regularly with all of you one-on-one. There has been a lot of stuff pulling me away from our one-on-one meetings. I am in control of my calendar so that is going to change. But what can we all do? I can't figure this out by myself. What changes do we need to make in order to be a more effective team?”

Wow. Not one person checked their e-mail as he offered that opening soliloquy. In response, everyone opened up, participated heartily, and committed to a change in behavior that they perceived would help make the overall team more effective. He had started a two-day conversation that mattered and ultimately changed the team dynamics.

You don't have to be at an offsite and it does not have to be a special occasion to have conversations that matter. You can create meaningful conversations as you go about your daily routine. If you are alert, opportunities emerge for you to have real conversations instead of staying on the surface of things. Questions are powerful tools if you want to start conversations that matter. Ultimately, develop your own set of questions that you feel comfortable with. As a start, I recommend that all of my clients become proficient in asking the following 10 conversational questions:

• Where are you from originally?
• What do you like to do in your spare time?
• What was your first leadership role?
• How do you choose people to hire for your team?
• What kinds of behaviors irritate you in colleagues?
• Whom do you admire?
• How would you describe yourself as a leader?
• What kinds of situations bring out the best in you?
• What kinds of situations bring out the worst in you?
• What is the hardest thing you have ever done as a leader?

The first question is generally nonthreatening and appropriate in almost any situation. I am often amazed, though, by how few people can tell me where their boss is originally from, or the colleagues they interact with every day. Sometimes the opposite of the perfect boss syndrome is going on and the client thinks the boss is just awful; in that case, the client can rarely tell me very basic stuff about the boss as a person, like where he or she is from. Certainty has taken hold; the client believes the boss is terrible, period, so why invest time and energy in learning more? That is true of all of us when we are not “clicking” with someone; we think we know who he or she is and stop being curious. Our view hardens. What can we possibly learn about people by asking where they are from, anyway?

The importance of early experience in shaping who we are is a well-accepted fact. After the person responds, try adopting a curious tone and ask what was it like to grow up in Minneapolis? Listen carefully and let your curiosity drive. Listen for whether a person grew up in a rural or urban area, what the culture was like, whether they ever go back, and what their early education was like. With this simple question, you can begin to understand how a person became who they are now.

“What do you do in your spare time?” Again, a really nonthreatening question. Does a person engage in a competitive sport, or do they love to travel to remote locations? Again, you are getting a sense of a whole person instead of just seeing one aspect of a person who shows up to a meeting at work and needs to move a project along. If they love golf, let your curiosity drive and ask for their handicap. Some people will answer with a number and a sense of pride. Others will laugh. Golf is an interesting one, as the interest can be primarily about pursuing excellence and mastering the game, or it can be primarily social, depending on the person. You can't put all golfers in the same category. This is where listening carefully is important, not just to the facts but the emotion, tone, and body language as well. Does the person become more animated when talking about this hobby?

“What was your first leadership role?” I use this one at team-building sessions all the time. It is generally nonthreatening, as I have never had anyone uncomfortable with it, and I have asked it in several groups larger than 15. People always see their colleagues a shade differently when they talk about being captain of the football team or working at the Safeway at the age of 16. This question helps people tune in to how others have evolved over time. It also can give you a sense of what they think is important in leading others. Do they focus on the results? Do they focus on their own performance? Do they focus on how they wound up in the leadership role? Did they like their first leadership role?

When I use this with executive groups, I do it in the following sequence. First, I ask them to describe their first leadership role in a short paragraph. Then, I ask them to write down the name of everyone else on the team on the same sheet of paper. They are to leave space after each name for a paragraph. Then, I say the most important aspect of the exercise is listening. Each of you will share what you wrote about your first leadership experience and we can all ask questions. Your assignment is to learn something new about each of your colleagues and write your learning down in the space you left after that person's name. The heart of the exercise is what you can learn about others, not yourself. This almost always warms up even the most difficult executive group. They typically take on the challenge to learn something new about each of their colleagues with a competitive tone, as in, “I am going to be the best at this exercise.”

As they go from person to person, the tone shifts and they start having conversations that matter. This question, even though generally nonthreatening, is a deeper question than the first two. If someone starts talking about themselves and going through every role they have ever had, pay attention. They could be a GM leader or they could just like to talk a lot. Again, be curious and notice how individuals respond to the prompt of this interesting question.

“How do you choose people to hire for your team?” This one is more complicated than it appears. Whether or not your boss has thought a lot about this one is revealing. As you begin to experiment with this one, you will notice a lot of variation. Some bosses will give you pat answers like “I look for hard workers” and almost recite a formula. That can mean that they really don't know how they decide, or it could be a cover. For example, the pat answers could be a cover for “I hire people who make me feel good.” (Remember those GM bosses we discussed earlier in the chapter.) Other people will say it depends or has changed a lot in the last few years. Still others will tell you stories about bad hires and good hires. Listen carefully and be curious. The person is giving you clues about who they really are.

“What kinds of behaviors irritate you or bother you?” Timing really matters on this one. It needs to be asked in the right situation. You can't just walk up to your boss at the mingle function and say, “Hey, what kinds of behaviors really irritate or bother you?” That is just awkward. It can be artfully used when you are struggling with another team member, though.

Imagine this scenario: You are in charge of pulling together the agenda for the monthly staff meeting. Two days before the meeting, your boss asks for the agenda. You say you're still waiting for input from the marketing lead named Ron. Your boss comments that this seems to be a monthly event and you confirm that, yes, it is an ongoing issue with Ron. You go on to say that you usually have to physically go over to the next building to get his input on anything. Then, you can ask how your boss would deal with this behavior if Ron were a peer. You can very easily segue into a conversation about what drives your boss crazy in colleagues. This question is really about self-knowledge. It can come out in a lot of different ways, but ultimately, knowing what kinds of behaviors drive you crazy is a key element of self-knowledge.

This one also requires more self-disclosure from your boss than the earlier questions. Does your boss seem comfortable with that level of self-disclosure, or try to change the subject? If you find it difficult to get your boss to have a conversation beyond the superficial, that is a sign. You may be dealing with someone who is not who he appears to be on the surface. Beware and keep noticing. With some people, it just takes time for them to open up. With others, it is never going to happen.

A question like “Whom do you admire?” gets at who your boss really wants to be. Think about the people you admire. You probably notice they all have qualities you would like to possess. They may also have qualities you detest. But we all admire specific people because of specific qualities. I tend to admire people who have a great breadth of intelligence and are deeply knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. I can excuse a lot if I find a person to be intellectually interesting. What does that tell you about me? It is potentially telling you a lot about me if you are listening carefully. If I were your boss, you might make sure to present the broader picture to me on a regular basis. You might also hypothesize that I could be blind to the faults of certain people on the team who had a lot of intellectual horsepower. Notice the word hypothesize. In using questions to learn about your boss or colleagues, you are always listening carefully and forming working hypotheses, which can change in light of new evidence. Remember, curiosity is key. By allowing people to reveal themselves, you're less likely to become locked into a position of certainty.

“How would you describe yourself as a leader?” is a significant leap in depth from the earlier questions. Again, timing is crucial. This one is a good fit for a nontask situation and particularly a good fit for coaching and development conversations. A softer form of this one is “how would you like other people to describe you as a leader?” This one is quite popular these days, as most people are talking about their leadership brand in one shape, form, or fashion. Often, my clients tee up the original question or the softer form by referencing a leadership book they have just read. This question begins to get at core values.

Now, clever bosses who are good at selling themselves may nail this question and say something that sounds just right. Does it sound too right? Too neat and tidy? Does it come across as genuine? What nonverbal signals are you receiving as your boss answers this question? Does your boss mention any weaknesses? If not, you could hypothesize that he or she is not aware of any weaknesses, or does not feel comfortable throwing them on the table, or both. Continue to watch and learn about your boss or colleague.

The next two questions go together. Asking “What kinds of situations bring out the best in you?” and “What kinds of situations bring out the worst in you?” can help you learn how aware your boss is of how situations impact his or her behavior.

The fundamental attribution error is one of the most well-researched and consistent insights within social psychology. The fundamental attribution error is that behavior is heavily influenced by the pressures and forces inherent in situations. Situations impact behavioral choice as much as, or more than, personality drivers. The error is that we humans tend to overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of situational factors, especially when we are trying to make sense of the behaviors of others.

Don't expect your boss to lecture you on the fundamental attribution error! But notice your boss's level of awareness regarding how his or her behavior varies across situations. At a basic level, does your boss understand that he or she behaves differently across situations? Is your boss uncomfortable with the fact that his or her behavior varies? These two questions allow you to get a sense of your boss's depth and psychological complexity—or lack thereof.

Also think through how often you have witnessed variations in your boss's behavior across situations. Machiavellian personalities were identified by psychologist Richard Christie and Florence Geis.⁹ These complex personalities were named after Machiavelli, who worked in the great courts of Florence during the Renaissance as an advisor to the leaders who ruled the world at that time. In essence, Machiavellian personalities are manipulative and willing to be deceitful to get their way.

The bosses to watch out for are referred to in the social sciences as “high Machs.” There is a strong possibility that one of the bosses you have been deceived by in the past was a high Mach. High Machs have a vast ability to change their behavior in drastic ways across situations in order to get what they want. We all have to adapt to circumstances every day in the workplace, but high Machs may or may not be aware of the drastic shifts they make to accommodate to circumstances.

Back to curiosity in terms of the way your boss answers the question. No final diagnosis allowed. Does your boss avoid the question? How does the response to these questions fit with your observations? If you have a working hypothesis that your boss may be manipulative or Machiavellian, put your guard up. Watch out and watch your boss's behavior carefully. Do not be naive.

The tenth question is the power question: “What is the hardest thing you have ever done as a leader?” This question gets at what Bill George¹⁰ called the leadership development crucible. Crucibles are vessels used in labs to expose chemical substances to heat, usually a Bunsen burner. Translating the metaphor to authentic leadership development, what happens to a person when they are under pressure and in a very difficult situation? In my world, we refer to these tests of leadership as having developmental heat.

These crucibles in leadership development can take many forms. They can be international assignments, unexpected downturns in the business, being tasked to turn around a failing business, making a judgment call to close down a plant, and/or leading a team that does not want to be led by you. This question asks about your boss's most difficult crucible.

Timing of this question is crucial. It is also important that you've been building a deeper relationship with your boss before you throw this one out. If you can't get engagement on some of the earlier questions, asking this one is probably ill advised. But if you have been working at this relationship and feel you are getting a sense of who your boss is beyond the surface, go for it and listen carefully and with curiosity to the answer.

People typically respond to this power question in one of three ways. Some people deflect it totally. Others will answer the question, and it will be clear they got through it and don't want to dwell on it or talk about it a lot. The third group will tell you the story and explain what they learned as a result of the experience. Bill George of the Harvard Business School teaches that navigating these crucibles and integrating the learning into who you are is one of the hallmarks of authentic leaders.

The Authenticity Continuum

We've covered a lot of ground in this chapter. As you pay more attention to the behaviors of your boss and yourself, do not neglect the obvious. Is your boss committed to being an authentic leader? Is it something your boss really cares about and demonstrates in language and behavior? If being authentic really matters to you or your boss, then you can become more authentic. Being authentic is not something you are or are not. It's not like being pregnant. If you listen to most casual conversations at work, we tend to assume that someone is either authentic or not. However, the notion of becoming more authentic is more accurate than any absolute dichotomy. Human beings are far too complex for absolute dichotomies.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck¹¹ delineated between the fixed mind-set and the growth mind-set. The fixed mind-set is just what it sounds like. You are either intelligent, or a good tennis player, or a good student, or not. It is fixed and based on your native abilities. People with a growth mind-set believe that with work they can become more authentic, more intelligent, and better tennis players. Guess which mind-set tends to lead to more success and higher levels of self-esteem. You got it, it's the growth mind-set. Think about authenticity as a continuum with an infinite number of places between being authentic and being a fake. Authentic leaders are seeking ways to become more authentic. Apply a growth mind-set in your thinking about authentic leadership, imagine that continuum, and be careful who you follow. There are bad actors out there who are not trying to become more authentic. You will be deceived again. There is no way to accurately read everyone. However, you are better equipped to avoid following the wrong people and to learn from your mistakes if you make regular use of the concepts and questions in this chapter as tools.

The Workouts

• The idea of asking probing questions is not new. One of the more fun ways to play with questions is the Proust Questionnaire.¹² There are several versions of the Proust questionnaire in circulation. The questions were used as a parlor game in Paris in the 1880s. Marcel Proust was a French novelist and the questions were popular in his social circle. The questions are light in tone but pull out interesting aspects of people. Answer the following questions for yourself and begin experimenting with one question that you like with others. Be careful with timing—and I am not necessarily recommending these as tools to get to know your boss!

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What historical figure do you most identify with?
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
5. Which talent would you most like to have?
6. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, whom or what do you think you would be?
7. What is your most treasured possession?
8. What is your motto?

• Pick out one of the recommended questions for your boss and find a way to ask it at the first opportunity. Listen carefully. Ask the question whether you like your boss or not. Learning more about your boss could change your view. Avoid those fixed mind-sets unless absolutely necessary.
• We talked in the chapter about greater good (GG) vs. greater me (GM) leadership. Remember that the vast majority of us are actually a mixed bag in that we look out for ourselves and for the greater good. It is not smart to be 100 percent looking out for the greater good, as others will take advantage of you. Really think about your own behavior. How would you characterize yourself? Are you 80 percent GG and 20 percent GM or the reverse? Are you satisfied with your current percentages? Would you like to change the ratio?