Practicing leadership is tough. It involves both learning something new and unlearning something habitual. Thus many leaders find practicing itself to be uncomfortable if not painful.
Last month we explored one upshot of this: Fakery, which is when people say things that are completely out of alignment with what they think and feel inside. This led to a simple injunction: Don’t be a Faker.
This month, we look at different phenomenon: the Sincerity Police, which you’ll recall are those critical voices inside and outside of you saying that unless you are 100% sincere, you are being fake. These voices are a tremendous barrier to practice and, therefore, to more skillful leadership. That’s why I advise:
Accelerate past the Sincerity Police
Contrary to popular assumption, I believe that sincerity in communication is not all-or-nothing. At any given moment, we can be 100 percent sincere or 0 percent sincere, but these are not the only options. Sincerity actually exists along a spectrum. This is because human beings are complex. Although we live in the present, we hold within us both the legacy of our pasts and unrealized intentions for the future. [Read more…] about Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 2 [March 2008]