Leaders wear sweatpants too
I remember the day I decided to drop my voice down to the low edge of its range.
I was sitting in a high school English class and my teacher was focused on a classmate of mine for saying ‘like’ too many times in the process of asking a question. I don’t really remember what she was asking, but I do remember my teacher mimicked her words by adopting a high-pitched, soft-toned voice.
And it hit me.
All of the people lauded by society and in the media as ‘strong leaders’ shared a few common themes:
They didn’t say ‘like’ or ‘um’. They dressed in polished suits. They stated their points firmly and directly.
And last but not least, while most of them were men, in the event that they were women, the lower their voice was, the more respect they seemed to command.
In fact, it seemed as if a high or soft voice was room enough of a provocation for someone to comment on the woman’s perceived lack of intelligence or ditziness.
As I took stock of my own not-so-high but not-at-all-low voice, combined with my persistent baby face and overuse of the word ‘like’, I deduced that something would have to change if I wanted to be taken seriously in life.
I could not change my face. And I knew I could turn the ‘like’ switch on and off if I willed it hard enough. So, my voice was the only thing left to adjust.
Even though my voice naturally sits in a relatively high range, and even though years of dropping my voice down lower than natural would come to create an annoyingly persistent layer of vocal fry, I spent nearly a decade of my life speaking on the edge of my range with the hopes that it would help people undeniably see me as a strong leader.
Unfortunately, it was not the foolproof plan I had hoped it to be.
There are many things we continue to get wrong about leadership.
One of the things that continues to intrigue me is how skilled we humans seem to be at labeling leadership with all of the labels that actually have nothing to do with leadership - both in the workplace and in life in general.
For example, most workplaces still tend to carry a baseline presumption that years of experience is synonymous with increased leadership qualities - which proves time and time again to be a problematic auto-correlation.
Most people raised in western society tend to carry an implicit bias that tall, white, cis-het men are more followable (read: better leaders) than the rest of society.
There is a reason why business people get so stressed out about feeling like they need to be perfect on social media. Time and time again we see that those who are conventionally attractive according to societal standards are seen to be more authoritative and worth listening to than others.
Even without the networking advantage given by being in the right rooms, people who have the ‘right’ schools and jobs on their resume are more likely to get placed in high paying, high profile jobs than their state school, generic workplace counterparts.
The reality is that leadership has nothing to do with our clothes, our appearance, our resume, our gender, our race, or our age.
Leadership is a very specific skill that can both be natural and learned. It is entirely predicated on how a person shows up to each moment - their mindset, their attitude, their integrity, and consistency. It is proven in the moments as they play out, not through estimations based on superficial markers.
Most of us can wrap our heads around this conceptually, but when it comes to actual implementation and awareness, we fall short.
What gives? Why is the core of leadership so difficult to hold present?
What ifs and always have dones
Humans are creatures of habit.
The fallacy of the devil you know being better than the devil you don’t runs rampant through our society. And our collective memories can be rather short in favor of eliminating perceived risk.
Most people I know have had the experience of watching their employer hire the manager who walked a very slick walk and talked a very alluring talk - only to have them be an absent or destructive leader in daily practice. Many people who have experienced the damage of this first-hand are now actually in a position to hire at their company.
And yet, if trends continue, even those people will still hire for the incorrect, superficial markers of a leader.
Questions like, “If we aren’t looking at their polish, what do we even look for?” start to pop up.
Rationalizations like, “Well, how a person speaks and how a person looks matters. The external package matters. I mean, are we just going to pretend it doesn’t?” appear.
It can feel like a giant leap to give a position to a strong leader with 5 years of technical experience when people who have held the position have typically had 15+ years of technical experience in the field.
It can feel like a risk to go against your societally influenced implicit bias and follow a person based on how they are actually leading vs how their own personal branding campaign might be influencing you to feel.
Especially in this age of constant media bombardment, our collective obsession with the glamour of image is continuing to work against accurately honing in on what leadership is and is not.
The cost may not seem so high because enduring toxic or weak leadership is something we seem to have collectively normalized. But ultimately, what we can and will gain from continuing to accurately assess and promote true leadership is so much greater.
Resist, resist, resist
So then how do we recalibrate to authentic leadership? The first, strongest, and best answer I have is this: start with yourself.
So many of us, in our own quest for development, will flock towards a certain type of person - usually one whose characteristics are societally championed.
We may find that all of the leadership books we are reading were written by white men. Or we may find that we have a preference for content delivered by speakers who feel authoritative when they speak because of their body language, voice tone, and ability to take up space on a stage. We may hire a coach because their wardrobe and lifestyle feels aspirational. Or we may start to focus more on adjusting our outer world than adjusting and cultivating our own character.
Listen, clothes and hair and makeup and impressive speech delivery are all great and wonderful. But they are not the same thing as leadership. And if you are trying to grow leadership inside of you - one of the best ways you can start to course correct your own conceptualization of leadership is by examining why you are choosing the resources you are choosing.
What are the internal qualities you want to cultivate as a leader?
And then, look for resources to support you with growing those qualities. Here’s a hint: most internal qualities to not require nor are they necessarily inherently made stronger by any specific job, fancy degree, snazzy wardrobe, or any external characteristic.
Most internal qualities are grown with purposeful, present practice. So, in my opinion, the strongest resources for supporting one in their own leadership development will help that person purposefully and presently practice the leadership qualities they wish to possess - rather than giving them a to-do list of ‘shoulds’ geared to transform them into a leader like a corporate aged Cinderella.
When we can grow authentic leadership in ourselves, it becomes easier to spot it in others. When we can drop the notion that we aren’t a strong leader because we don’t have the right [insert superficial quality here]- not only do we allow ourselves to become a stronger leader, we also give more space and allowance for authentic leadership in the world around us.