Authenticity must be measured and wisely dispensed. There is a time for brutal honesty and there is a time to play your cards close to you.
What does this mean? Well, it means that when motivating people to get the best results out of them, there is a time when you need to tell a person how it is, how they need to improve and even to crush them to motivate them. But if you don’t read the situation properly, you may crush them too much and they won’t be able to recover. So, at times, instead of dealing that crushing blow you will instead lift them up and encourage them.
Does this mean you are being anything less than authentic? Well, as a leader sometimes being wise and encouraging is the way to bring about authentic change in the people around you. So the difference between that brutal honesty and playing your cards close comes down to the response you are looking to elicit from an individual.
For a good case study in what we are referring to, take a look at today’s article which is a helpful study on this issue on the whole.
Read the full article here: When authenticity does more harm than good
