Leading from the In-Between. John McAuley

The Leadership Coach’s Advantage (April 2013): 32-37

      SECTION II—FORMING THE RIGHT FOOTINGS

      Shaping Young Leaders with Character, Confidence and Cadence

      CHAPTER 2—CHARACTER

      Being Honest and True

      KEY MESSAGES

      •Character is bigger than morality—and is revealed in all our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

      •We shape character in emerging leaders by practicing affirmation, embracing authenticity and cultivating attunement.

      •Character is not perfection—we are all unfinished.

      SHAPING WHOLE-PERSON CHARACTER IN EMERGING LEADERS

      Let me begin with a confession.

      In 1988, during my first year of college, when the exam for my leadership and management course was scheduled, I arranged to write it early. I had already planned a trip home to Northern Ireland, so I couldn’t be there for the scheduled exam date. My professor was accommodating. He led me into a resource room at the end of a corridor near his office. I sat at the table and put my briefcase beside me. He closed the door and wished me luck. As I wrote the exam, every now and again my professor would come in the room and check on me. All was going well until I got to a question about Blanchard and Hershey’s situational leadership theory. As I filled out the chart on leadership styles, I began to doubt my answer and worry if I was mixing something up. The question was worth a big proportion of the exam mark, and I wanted to get it right. At the moment of my internal questioning, my professor came in to the room. I waited until he left, then quickly grabbed my briefcase, opened it up and checked my cards. When I confirmed that I had the right answer, I continued to write the exam.

      That summer, I was speaking on integrity at Muskoka Woods. As I prepared for my talk, I prayed, “God, if there is anything in my life where I have not acted with integrity, please help me to see it.”

      Well, instantly about five things came to my mind. One of them was that I cheated on the leadership and management exam.

      Not only that, in an unbelievable irony, the very same professor of the very same leadership and management course was coming to Muskoka Woods that week. There I was, about to speak on integrity, and who was to be in the audience but the professor of the class whose exam I cheated on. Only God has this sense of humour. I knew immediately that I needed to go speak to my professor before the event. I knew then as I know now that when I blow it on character, when I am not at my best, when I act without integrity, I need to go put it right.

      I found him on the property and pulled him aside. I told him what happened and confessed that if I had written the answer wrong, I was going to change it. He said to me, “I appreciate you telling me that. I believe that you are acting with integrity; I’m confident you had it right anyway, and you don’t need to worry about it.” I was very thankful for his graciousness. In that moment, I was struck anew by the realization that being an effective leader does not mean you’d better get an A in your leadership course. Instead, I had a deep conviction that my character needs to be the determinant of my longevity and effectiveness as a leader.

      Being a person of character is often directly correlated to your sphere of influence. If you are not a person of character, you may well climb the ladder to great heights. However, if you do not attend to the pieces of your broken character, there will come a time when you will meet with a catastrophic failure. The consequences for missteps in character are exponentially more powerful than for missteps in competence. They linger longer, and the wound is deeper. A life of hiddenness and deception is almost always revealed in the end. If you don’t take character development seriously, you will severely limit your sphere of responsibility and influence.

      What is character? Character is being honest and true, through and through, in my whole person. In ancient times, unscrupulous potters would sometimes cover over the cracks in their clay pots with wax to disguise the pot’s imperfections. On the outside, the pot would look smooth and sound. But once you poured hot water into it, the wax would melt, and the pot would begin to leak. As a result, honest potters started labeling their pots “sin cere”—literally, “without wax.” When you bought a sin cere pot, you could be confident that the way the pot looked on the outside was a fair picture of its true character. A sin cere pot was made only with the earth’s rich, dark clay, well-crafted and fired, through and through. Like the clay pot, the character we want is whole and complete, with integrity between what shows on the surface and what is hidden underneath.

      Most of the conversations around character have been narrow in their scope. Character is often reduced to moralism and personal lifestyle choices. We focus on how well young people follow “the rules” of good behaviour. Instead of asking “What are you learning in your life?” “How are your friendships?” or “What are your hopes for what you will become?” we’re more concerned with the old-school trio of sex, drugs and alcohol. In other words, we’ve often defined good character by what people don’t do, rather than what they do. Whenever we do this, we reduce character to moralism—and we miss an opportunity to truly see young people for who they are.

      We also reduce the fulsome meaning of character when we define it as who you are when you are alone, when no one else is looking. True, character is sometimes revealed behind closed doors and in the dark without the spotlight of public view. However, character is not only who I am when I am alone; it is also who I am when I am active in the outside world with my friends and strangers looking on. One of the greatest challenges for young people in this generation is to find that match between who I am when I am alone and who I am when I am active and on show in the world. Because the value of acceptance reigns so supreme in the ethos of today’s young people, they typically have little problem “giving permission” to others to be who they are and behave as they will. However, for a young person to “take permission” to be who I am and behave as I believe is right, especially if it is in contradiction to others around me, is far more challenging. Emerging leaders are likely to disguise their real selves for the sake of letting their audience hear what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. In the age of acceptance, for a young person to stand up and say “This is right” and “You are wrong” is social suicide. Developing character means facing questions like not only “Who am I when I am alone?” but also “Who am I when I’m in front of people?” “What am I when I am not in a leadership position?” and also “Who am I as a leader in front of people whose opinion I care about?”