Me and my very smiley coachee – not the one featured here, by the way!
So, you’ve just landed a fabulous new leadership role. Hurrah! No mean feat in today’s climate of redundancies and cut-backs.
The mission is great. You’re doing work you’re very good at. You can see truly exciting opportunities to make a difference and have an impact early on.
But something’s up.
Your Director isn’t giving you the feedback you need to do a great job and it’s making you feel uncertain and unconfident.
Intrusive thoughts are sneaking in. Am I actually any good? Why did they appoint me over the 1000s of other applicants? What if this… what if that…?
It’s confusing.
He doesn’t seem very interested in you either or particularly friendly. Like you’ll just be left to sink or swim.
And your new team? Well, you get the feeling it’s not a great idea to be too warm and friendly because it will undermine your authority. And you really don’t want to do that!
I have a client in this boat right now:
- She feels she can’t ask for the missing feedback (despite knowing she thrives on it) in case it makes her seem ‘needy’ so early in her appointment. She’s got to get through her probationary period, after all.
- She’s worried that she shouldn’t be warm or too vulnerable with her team because they might think she’s not up to the job.
It reminds me of the phrase we were taught when I was a probationary teacher in the 80s – ‘Don’t smile ’til Christmas’.
The idea was that we had to show the students who was boss. Stamp our authority and be a ‘proper’ leader. It was a very popular approach then.
If you smiled, you were toast.
Not only was this advice the worst I’ve ever been given (I crumbled and decided the job wasn’t for me before we even got to December), but research clearly shows that this approach actively damages team performance and your own well-being.
By trying to protect herself with armour, my new leader is making everything harder – the isolation, the self-doubt, the exhaustion of performing all the time. And she’s slowing down the building of the trust and psychological safety her team needs to do their best work on something they’re passionate about.
Work-based research, from McKinsey to Brené Brown, clearly shows the same thing – leaders who are real and show vulnerability are perceived as MORE competent than their more hold-it-together colleagues, and team members are five times as likely to trust them.
Way to go!
The fact is that everything you’ve been told about ‘professional distance’ and ‘not looking needy’ is not just wrong but the opposite of what creates high-performing teams. Trust. Connection and Authenticity.
So, how about leading like a human?
What if, instead of waiting until Christmas to smile, you:
- Start your first team meeting with a big smile and ask everyone what they need from you to do their best work?
- Admit when you’re still working things out and invite the team to work it out with you?
- Ask for help from that team member who’s been there for years and knows the ropes?
- Show up as yourself – funny, curious, occasionally uncertain – rather than as some cardboard cut-out of what you think a leader should be?
- And while you’re at it, share with your Director or CEO what you need to do YOUR best work, too?
There’s nothing needy or inadequate about any of this. It’s just good leadership.
Yes, you could try the ‘don’t smile ‘til Christmas’ approach. But that sounds like horribly hard work to me – and the research shows it doesn’t even work.
Over to you
What do you think? Are you a ‘don’t smile til Christmas’ leader? Or have you found your own way to lead authentically? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What’s next?
If you’d like my support to feel confident and at ease in your leadership drop me an email to katie@katieduckworth.com and let’s have a chat about one-to-one coaching in the new year.
