Authenticity is a major ingredient in getting the trust and respect of your team. Trust is gained based on peoples’ perception that you have their best interest in mind. The respect you get is the reward for what you can do professionally for your team. How much trust should I place in someone that doesn’t feel authentic? I feel like he is hiding something from me. Why should he hide something if he is well intended toward me? How much do I respect someone that tries to cover up her mistakes or the fact she doesn’t have knowledge on a certain topic?

All these questions cross your team mates’ minds every time you get through as being pretentious. And as you have probably guessed, the answers are not in your favor. And if you have already been perceived as non-authentic, it will take a lot of time and energy just to get back to square one. Being authentic sounds easy, what should be so difficult in just being myself? Typically, the difficulty comes from trying to fit into some patterns and facing the fears resulting from some myths:

Myth 1: Because you now have a leadership role you should behave differently

Probably you have witnessed situations when someone from your department got promoted and suddenly started to behave differently. Remember Jim, your friendly, casually-dressed coworker that after promotion started to dress up, display a serious face and become more directive? Did his new choice of buzz words and unintelligible acronyms make you think he suddenly knows more? How did you feel when you noticed this change in Jim? Did that change make you see him as a leader? Did that make you trust and respect him more? Guess not.

Myth 2: People expect you to know everything and be better than everybody in the team at everything

Did you feel the pressure during your first days of your new leadership role? Have you ever experienced the “impostor syndrome”? Have you ever felt that you don’t deserve that position and that you are going to be exposed soon as a “fraud”? Well, these thoughts typically originate from your assumptions about what people are expecting from you, combined with an insufficient level of self-esteem and self-confidence. The worst reaction to these ideas is to pretend to be something that you are not. It’s much simpler to ask explicitly your team members what they expect from you.

Myth 3: A true leader doesn’t have weaknesses and doesn’t make mistakes

If you feel attracted by a leadership role, it’s possible that you resonated with various super heroes from books and movies. They are flawless, body, mind and spirit. Everything is working out for them under any circumstance. And they don’t make mistakes. Failure is not an option, remember? Those movies are not documentaries about leadership, that is the entertainment industry.

Truth is that showing a weak side contributes significantly in bonding with your team. It shows your human nature(most likely you are not a terminator, are you?) and stimulates their empathy. Same goes with making mistakes. Just acknowledge them, fix the damage and learn some lessons. If you share with your team the personal lessons learned out of those mistakes, even better.