Congruence in Leadership
The Only Possible Way to Built Trust. Yet the Most Difficult One.
Leaders all around the world talk about the importance of building relationships based on trust. Trust is mentioned everywhere, yet it might be hard to know how to establish it. For me, the answer to this question is congruence. But that is also the tough part about it.
In this article, I would like to introduce a view on congruence and integrity from the perspective of the humanistic psychotherapeutic approach of Carl Rogers and the analogy that I can see with building trust in leadership roles.
Congruence in Leadership
What does that mean to be a congruent leader? Being congruent means being who we are. It means having an integrity. This integrity has three fundamental pillars. It’s about understanding what we experience and being aware of that. These two aspects need to match. In the interactions with the external world, there is one more level, and that is the willingness to communicate with others what is going on inside us. It is about being transparent about our inner experience. To be “real” one needs to be aligned with both the inner (experience and awareness) and the external dimension¹.
Human beings have an excellent skill in recognizing that a person is not congruent. It instantly activates mechanisms to be cautions and therefore not to trust the other person. If a leader wants to build trust, the person needs to be transparent in a way that is helpful and that requires a lot of self-development and having strong value foundations. Also, there needs to be the integrity within the inner experience. Even if a leader is not aligned internally in the experience and the awareness of the experience, it builds distrust externally. For managers, it means putting ideal-self away, working on self acceptance and be open to whatever is going on inside. It also means having courage to stand behind our beliefs even though it might bring some discomfort.
A few months back, I was in a tough performance review meeting, as I had to provide very negative feedback to one of my colleagues. The person was sad, and I saw tears in their eyes. This emotional reaction from the other side challenged me. I immediately wanted to put my defense mechanisms in place and disconnect from the situation. When I realized that, I was searching for the emotion that I am trying to get rid of, and I have found out that I felt very sad for the person. While I knew providing the feedback was the right thing to do, I also was sad for doing it. Realizing this and allowing myself to feel that way, putting all assumptions about a tough leader away, helped me overcome the situation with a feeling that I am not cheating on myself. Also, allowing myself that I can have perhaps such a contradictory experience, was a huge relief for me.
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” — Carl Rogers
The path to our own acceptance is a journey of recognizing our inner defense mechanisms. It’s a painful, never-ending process of accepting of our own emotions and not pushing them away. Furthermore, it’s a process of constant learning and changing — the hardest process for a human being; a way of becoming a complete person. I truly believe that this “realness” is, however, the most enriching part of every human interaction. It establishes a genuine connection and trust in relationships with others.
In the leadership world, our interpretation of inner experience and our transparency is challenged at every moment. We need to persuade our managers to take our people’s needs into consideration and; we need to translate the company vision and motivate people for it. Both levels are challenging — what if we don’t believe in the vision, what if we know that our leadership team is not open to receive feedback? There are moments when our beliefs and values are challenged. If we cannot have an honest inner dialogue, we can fail easily. We cannot ignore if we feel disconnected from a company vision or values, we cannot pretend we live it if we don’t, because we would disconnect from who we are which would make us not only unhappy, but it would also affect our relationships with others.
A leader that is not in touch with their emotions is not only untrustworthy, but even worse, such a leader can harm others by being convinced he acts according to their beliefs.
Years ago, I failed hard as a leader. A person in my team was struggling with their mental health. Instead of providing compassion, I was pushing hard on their performance. I was obsessed with performance and considered the person weak for not being able to deliver. While I must have felt the pain the other person was going through, I simply was not aware of it. I did not know how to be in touch with my own emotions, but I knew how to be in touch with my rationalization of how a human being should operate. The way I was thinking about the person and treating them was a good example of an inner dialogue I was having with myself every minute of my life. I was judging myself, thinking I need to be tough to be good enough as a leader, because otherwise I would fail as a person. I was over rationalizing things, and I was very successful in being disconnected from my true self. Not only that, but I did not accept the person in their situation, because I was not accepting myself as a person. I was not congruent.
Conclusion
Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self. — Mahatma Gandhi
We as leaders are expected to live company values, believe in the vision, but what if we simply have doubts? The same in our inner communication. In a tough performance review, it might be expected that we deliver the message strongly, but what if we are simply sad for the other person in such a situation? It pushes us to disconnect from our own emotions and build defense mechanisms. We lay to ourselves or/and we stop being transparent with others. This leads to disconnection and distrust in our relationships. It ruins our relationships, and we can harm others easily. While I think it is extremely difficult to discover one’s own congruence — internally as well as externally, it’s the only way to build trustworthy relationships. It’s the beautiful art of being a real, complete person. And this is true leadership. As Carl Rogers says: “What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.” and I think we all need to remind ourselves about it more often.
