Should leaders wear masks?
You might be saying, “Of course, they should! No responsible person would risk spreading the COVID-19 virus, and leading by example is wearing your PPE when unable to social distance.”
Or, maybe you are thinking, “Leaders go against the tide! They also uphold fundamental values like freedom and aren’t swayed by popular opinion. Exercising personal liberty and not wearing a mask is an act of leadership.”
These are certainly strange times, and it’s likely you have an opinion on this important issue. However, these are not the kinds of masks I am speaking about. The reality is, leaders have always worn masks and they will continue to wear them well into the future.
If you’ve ever been in a leadership position, you already know this. With the responsibility of leadership comes high expectations from others. Like an actor, you are playing a role, and, so, you regularly put your mask on and go into character.
Here are some positive examples…
- You are nervous about meeting this quarter’s sales goals; however, you mask that fear and deliberately show up daily with an optimistic attitude in order to inspire (rather than deflate) your team.
- You are frustrated with a project’s “scope creep” and how the client is overworking/undercompensating members of your team. However, you mask that anger and calmly negotiate new terms that both preserve the relationship and your team’s sanity.
- You are surprised by a peer during cross-functional meeting when he publicly points out several areas where your team underdelivered. Rather than get defensive, you mask your feelings of betrayal and calmly exhibit curiosity/humility.
And here are some negative examples…
- You are overwhelmed with the relentless pace of working from home and trying to manage your home life simultaneously. However, you mask your stress level because you feel leaders should project composure and not show weakness. As a result, you miss opportunities to empathize and connect with your team members’ similar struggles.
- The news is relentlessly covering the death of George Floyd and the BLM protests. You notice a sadness in the room (and in yourself) at today’s staff meeting. Rather than talk about issues of diversity and inclusion firsthand with your team, you decide to mask these emotions by re-focusing the group on work execution.
Herein lies a significant challenge to leadership, knowing when wearing a mask serves us and when it will not.
Another way of stating the question might be: “When should a leader be authentic?”
Authenticity is widely considered as a cornerstone to effective leadership. However, the best leaders know the times wearing their masks are more important than being authentic! So, how do you know when to be authentic or to put your mask on?
To answer this question, we need to: 1) pay close attention to our emotions and 2) look to balance competency with a dash of vulnerability.
Notice that in all the examples provided, an emotion is being masked. Typically negative emotions like fear and anger don’t serve us as leaders. If not mindful, these emotions affect our physical presence (body language), choice of words (verbal communication), and diminish influence with others. If the emotion is not consistent with your role in the script, then mask up and go into character.
Still, like in the movies, most characters are flawed in some way! Those who desperately work to project pervasive competence come across as inauthentic. Look for moments when sharing your own vulnerabilities will demonstrate your humanity and help you to connect with others. Counterintuitively, you will earn greater respect and trust as a result.
We can use America’s mask debate as an example. No one is superhumanly immune to COVID-19 (without first having the virus). Thus, not wearing a mask in public can come across as inauthentic, like the leader is attempting to project invulnerability in order to make us feel safer. Wearing a mask in this situation is sharing the pain, it’s relating to the average citizen, it’s leadership!
Finally, it’s important to note that most leaders err to the side of wearing a mask rather than being their authentic self. This is often because they haven’t practiced emotional intelligence (E.I.) and how to balance authenticity with desired impact. The bridge to effective authenticity is through deliberate E.I. development and coaching.
If you are interested in assessing your own Emotional Intelligence and discovering areas for personal development, check out this assessment.
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David Spungin designs/facilitates leadership programs for Fortune 500 organizations and is a coach to senior-level executives. As the Founder & Principal Consultant at The Leader Growth Group, he’s helped over 3000 leaders to inspire more engaged and productive workplaces. Get a copy of his book, “Growing Leaders: 20 Articles to Challenge, Inspire, and Amplify Your Leadership” by clicking here.
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David understands how effective leadership generates success. A U.S. Army combat veteran and consultant to thousands of Fortune 500 managers, he is the Founder & Principal Consultant of 
2. Ignoring Emotions – Most coaching conversations have a strong human component to them. Perhaps a report is having a problem influencing a decision-maker, challenged by a co-worker’s personality, or uncertain of what the next stages of their career might be. Yet, many managers distance themselves from the messy emotional stuff and immediately move to generating options for a technical solution. Human challenges require us to exercise a little humanity first. Your report is experiencing emotions as a result of these challenges, so meet them where they are and help them to feel heard first.
3. Taking the Bait – Many managers, especially those new to coaching, are so eager to help that they accidentally “collude” with their report on their problem they face. They are doing all the right things like deep listening, exercising empathy, and helping their report to hear themselves. Yet, in doing so, they are only seeing the challenge through their report’s eyes, and losing objectivity. Great coaching is often about holding multiple perspectives simultaneously, and helping your report to see alternatives.
David understands how effective leadership generates success. A U.S. Army combat veteran and consultant to thousands of Fortune 500 managers, he is the Founder & Principal Consultant of 
Activated leadership starts with planning for change within the context of your environment. Assess the key stakeholders. Who are your allies? Who is likely to be in opposition? What are the hidden assumptions, values, and mental models that are contributing to being for or against your change initiative? I use Kurt Lewin’s 
Now, make no mistake, if it’s a big-enough change, this will be a struggle! Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it gets. In any change, there will be winners and losers. Thus, you need to anticipate and prepare for resistance. In the military, we called this “prepping the battlefield.” We never wanted to engage in conflict on other’s terms. Instead, we did things like emplacing shaping obstacles, causing opposition forces to change direction to where we held the advantage. Translation…understand who has the most to lose with your proposed change, and try to predict their next steps. What can you do to mitigate opposition? Perhaps you need to have (meetings before the meeting) to ensure public support from your allies. Or, maybe you need prepare concessions that will make losses resulting from change more tolerable to others. “Wargame” how things could play out, and prepare accordingly.
While you may need to be a lightning rod for a moment to help generate healthy debate, I offer you never do it alone, and there will come a point where you should transition to the final Activated leadership activity, which is bridge-building. This is when you focus the group by creating unity of vision and direction. Rather than concentrating on the differences, pay attention to their commonalities and shared values. A year from now, what is a better outcome that we’d all value? What should we be doing to make this vision a reality? Who needs to be included to bring diverse perspectives on how we should get there? What are the small baby steps we can agree on that will enable clear progress? These are example questions that an activated leader might use to facilitate powerful discussion. The path forward does not need to come from you directly, in fact, it’s better if it emerges from the group. While the heroic leader “tells then sells” their vision, the VUCA Proof© leader consults, delegates, and builds consensus. This ensures the greatest amount of team buy-in, which is imperative to leading change in a VUCA environment.
1.Inventory Historic Feedback – Reflect back on last year. What consistent feedback did you hear? What strengths did others value? Any weaknesses that are impeding your success? Try to list two to three answers to each of these questions. If this takes you more than 5 minutes to complete, I offer that your most important leadership goal for the coming year may need to be diligently and consistently collecting feedback on your leadership performance.
2. Imagine Team/Organizational Success –Take a moment and envision you’ve just fast- forwarded to December. It was an amazingly successful year and you are proud of your team and organizational performance! See the results in your mind’s eye. What are your clients, teammates, and reports saying about the year? Now, who would you need to become as a leader for this to be a reality? How would you personally need to change?
3. Note Environmental Trends – Perhaps you are already a high-performing leader and want to take your game to the next level. Look at how the world is evolving and seek opportunities to evolve with it. Here is a list of 
(David understands how effective leadership generates success. A U.S. Army combat veteran with corporate leadership experience, he is the Founder & Principal Consultant of The
Connect – Just like the Private learning how to “put steel on target” at the weapons qualification range, business execution requires one to master their resources and connect them with distant objectives. Specifically, there are three connections to be made that foster better execution. First, master an awareness of your personal strengths and connect these innate talents with the team’s objectives. Ask yourself: what are my exceptional gifts to the world and how can I provide the most value in day-to-day execution? Next, smartly connect to the infinite resources outside of you. Who can do this challenging activity much better than you can? Savvy leaders realize their boundaries and connect with others that compliment limitations. Finally, fully connect with your customer’s needs and expectations. Little is more frustrating than executing well on something that is no longer in the greatest service to your key stakeholders. Like the bullet seeking its target, the energy of connecting with your customer is one of laser-like focus. Don’t wait for feedback; be proactive and purposeful in continuously reaching out to clarify how things are going.
Adapt – Successful execution is becoming less of a formulaic process, and maintaining flexibility and agility is increasingly important. In essence, we must practice our ability to move with our shifting environment and change plans as necessary. In the Army, we might rehearse a complex mission for weeks on end. Yet, we lived by the rules of “the enemy always has a vote” and “no plan ever survives first contact (with that enemy).” A more relevant example might be at Google, where the culture promotes the concept of “design and iterate.” Googlers see strategy and execution as being one – a continuously refined process of trial and error that speeds up results. We might intuitively understand these concepts; however, many find them difficult to implement. We frequently become wed to our brilliant plans or overly comfortable with stale execution processes. The key to overcoming these barriers is to cultivate a “beginner’s mind” and learn to approach potential change from a place of curiosity. When we already “know” how to execute best, we resist things that do not reinforce these beliefs. Yet, when we lose our rigidity and get curious about possibilities, change becomes a way to simply get better.
Collaborate – Great execution today requires increased communication and collaboration. It seems simple enough, yet why can it be so hard to collaborate during execution? The answer lies in the two very different energies required to do these equally imperative skills. When we are personally executing, our heads are down, our eyes narrow, and we concentrate our energy so that we might overcome obstacles and complete our tasks. When we are collaborating, we pick our heads up, we open our eyes wide, and seek to see the bigger picture around us. Executing and collaborating well is an ebb and flow of contraction and expansion. We collaborate to build intent, execute initial steps, communicate needs, execute some more, check-in on collective progress, drive towards results… it’s a rhythm we all know well. Yet, we all seem to do much better at the personal execution part than we do at the collaboration part. Key to becoming a better collaborator is becoming aware of when you contract. When do you tend to put your head down and get overly focused on your piece of the execution pie? For me, I contract when I have made a personal commitment and am up against a tight deadline. In these moments, I can be a lousy communicator as I focus myself on fulfilling my promises and shut down to others in the process. Stress in general can make us all contract, so recognizing when we are stressed is a tell-tale sign that we need to communicate our needs and collaborate more with others.
It’s No Longer Optional – In a world of information overload and multitasking, a leader’s attention is their most precious asset. One might think of attention as the currency of leadership, just like in your wallet or purse you have a finite amount of money you have available to spend. How you spend it is largely a function of your values/needs, and how a leader “spends” attention reflects their priorities. Unfortunately, in today’s VUCA world, it’s easy for leaders to spend their attention on distractions. Mindfulness is no longer optional; it is now a critical leader behavior.
Getting Beneath the Surface – With deliberately focused attention, the leader can dig deeper to see and to hear what might go on in their environment. Think of your daily workflow as moving like a fast-paced stream. The water is rushing by, and from the banks, you can see rocks and how they are affecting flow. Now, you take your hand and place it in the water. Immediately, you notice new information. The water is cooler and deeper than you expected. You also notice there is a strong undercurrent down about two feet. Similarly, leaders leverage mindfulness to observe, feel, sense, and think about what’s going on inside them and around them.
Seeing connections – With fresh information to work with, a mindful leader can practice greater curiosity and empathy. They might notice the VP of Sales sounded a little down on the call today and get curious about how he is holding up after almost three straight weeks of traveling. They may then remember he has a 5-year-old daughter at home, who has likely also been affected. Or a leader might notice their own frustration around why Project X hasn’t made more progress in recent weeks, only to realize they haven’t done a great job communicating expectations for certain milestones. Having connected the dots, the leader now has greater choice as to what leadership actions will increase their influence and produce results.
Growing Leaders 