I was recently in an old-fashioned barber shop in which the walls were adorned with motivational and humorous quotes. One of them particularly caught my eye, as it alluded to the premise that to be successful, you not only needed to know what you were doing, but you also had to look like you knew what you were doing. This, of course, meant you needed a good haircut. On the surface, that is clever and amusing, but beneath the surface, it has a lot of truth to it as it applies to leadership. However, I’m not going to take this conversation in the direction of dressing for success or making statements about the kind of appearance a leader needs to make in order to be effective. No, I want to head back to one of my themes of making sure that the way we live and carry out our responsibilities needs to match what we say. Our appearance does matter, but only in the manner in which we behave, not in how well groomed we are.
Just this week I was reading yet another textbook that dealt with the importance of a leader’s espoused values lining up with their behavior. Hultman (2002) speaks of three kinds of values. We all have desired values – the ones that describe the person we would like to be. We also have espoused values – the ones which we say we believe. However, the one that is the most telling about who we really are is what he calls actual values. These are the ones which guide our behavior and our actions. It’s how we live in the real world. If you really want to know what a person believes and is committed to, watch what they do. Hultman makes it clear that there must be a match between espoused values and actual values in order for a leader to be credible, and he states, “Nothing raises a red flag faster than a disconnect between what one says and what one does.”
This applies to teams, departments, and entire organizations, but particularly the leader. If you really want to know who you’re following, don’t listen to their words nearly as much as watching what they do. By doing so, you will discover the real person behind the words. Schein (2010) describes this as the need for congruence between what is espoused and what is, in reality, observed. When speaking of authentic leadership, George (2003), states, “There is nothing worse than leaders who preach good values but fail to follow their own advice, or who set double standards for their employees and themselves.” Trevino & Nelson (2005) state, “Stated values that are inconsistent with management practice can quickly generate employee cynicism” because “your people will pay more attention to what you do than what you say. Your actions will speak much louder than your words, and if there is a disconnect, you will have no credibility.” Guess what? No credibility equals no trust, and I’ve heard it said many times that the primary currency of business is trust. Virtually every culture on the planet rates the ability to trust their leaders at the top of the list of desired characteristics for leadership.
So, as leaders, our actions matter. They matter even more than what we say. We’ve all heard the old adage, “What you’re doing is so loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying.” We must all remember this lesson and make sure that we are who we say we are, do what we say we will do, and behave in a manner that matches our espoused values. Without it, we really aren’t leaders.
Lead well.