#UnmaskedLeadership- Bring yourself to work | Unapologetically
By: Shivangi Walke
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership, Shivangi Walke, Leadership Branding, Unmasked Leadership

Rayya and Travis were thick. They had been with each other through business school, internships and now their campus placements. They specialised in different fields — Rayya was into marketing and Travis was focused on strategy. They had stuck through in this company for the last decade and were at enviable positions, and they were the best of friends. They didn’t work together much, but there was a merger on the horizon with an erstwhile competitor and Travis was in charge of quite a lot of things — such as reducing headcount from the support functions.

This got him bothered. He knew Rayya ran a tight ship and there wouldn’t be anybody from her team to let go, but asking her for a review felt like an intrusion. Also because there would be so much ambiguity about the results, he thought that he would be putting her in an impossible spot. He started withdrawing from her at work. The few times that they would run into each other in the elevator or the car park, he would bury himself in his phone. This wasn’t lost on Rayya, but she had no clue what was going on and what she could do to make it better.

Travis finally did call her for a meeting. She was formally summoned to his office by his secretary and that didn’t bode well with her. She was expecting a human moment with him, but he seemed oddly dismissive of her concerns and only rattled off what was policy. He kept saying that this was brought on by the merger situation and he would have an answer for her in a couple of weeks. Rayya had heard that Travis was an impersonal boss but now this almost felt like some sort of an assault to her. What bothered her even more was their growing distance.

The merger is now behind them.

Travis played quite a role in retaining most of Rayya’s team, but him and Rayya aren’t really thick any more. If Travis tries to talk, she’s hugely dismissive and cold. In the revised structure, they have to work together more now and their animosity seems to be creating the wrong vibes for their teams.

I have worked with a number of people from the new senior management team there and Travis and Rayya have been a part of my team coaching assignment.

One of the most humbling moments was when Travis got up and said he likes to keep work brief and businesslike and he thinks that’s not working any more.

It was almost a moment for the both of them. It was Travis’ first attempt at unmasking himself. He went onto say that he’s not usually like that, and talking to people feels like a task sometimes. It was just easier for him to wield his authority and get on with it. Talking about people, their opinions and their feelings simply got in the way of work and he preferred to keep a reserved persona to deter people from coming up to him.

I could literally see Rayya’s ears perk up at this point. She chose that moment to say that “avoiding conversations can get people hurt and are overall very damaging”. She looked at me and asked how does one manage the unsaid conversations that haven’t happened in the past?

There’s a backlog of unspoken stuff there, so how do you get past it, where do you start?

And all I said was “you’ve already started”.

Many leaders feel that being nurturing may compromise performance. That we can be respected or liked. It leads to alienation at work when people want to talk to you as human beings and you insist on being a recorded voice message. Have you been at the receiving end of how a conversation breaks down when you talk to customer service representatives about an issue. They drone on about policy, when what you actually need is someone to commiserate with you. Simple.

As an unmasked leader, you have to be the kind of leader who people find it okay to reach out to, even if you are a hard task master. Authentic leadership is grounded in an individual’s values and values don’t change from situation to situation.

But what happens when you bring human moments to work? As a leader I mean.

For one it reduces the amount of worrying you do. It’s because you don’t connect as humans, you have no way of predicting or anticipating what your team member will do with your instructions. If you knew them as people, you’d know their value system, what kind of people they are and most of all, you’d know if there was anything to worry about.

Toxic worry — when you are worrying about something that you have no control over and can’t forecast. A cryptic email or WhatsApp has the potential to worry you. But if you picked up the phone to ask what was up, then you wouldn’t worry as much. But for that you’d need to be human and for that you’d have to unmask yourself.

I am choosing this time to write on #UnmaskingLeadership because of the huge “impersonalisation” that technology affords these days and #COVID19 is forcing us to resort to. I keep falling into the trap of writing a quick WhatsApp text rather than planning a call myself in the name of efficiency. And each time I make the effort to speak or even better do a video call, the results are invariably more positive. As the chances for a #HumanMoment increase dramatically.

I wish you have many #HumanMoments in these uncertain times.

This article was first published on LinkedIn, March 13, 2020