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One way to describe leadership is: moving forward, under uncertainty, with full accountability.

In the episode I said “assuming responsibility.” It is the same idea.

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Moving forward

A leader has to move forward. A leader that doesn’t move forward is not a leader. You can be the most emotionally supportive person in the world, but if you don’t move forward, then you are assuming a different role: therapist, coach, HR manager. Essential roles, but different ones.

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Under uncertainty

There is never certainty in life and in business. You never have perfect information. You have a story, the best story you can come up with, and at some point you have to make a decision.

I was Chief Investment Officer of a major Oil & Gas company overseeing a forty-billion-dollar capital portfolio, and one of my jobs was to bring business cases to the board executive committee. Around that table sat people with a lot of business and energy experience, looking at the same numbers, at the same business case, and reaching very different conclusions. Should we do this? Should we not? Maybe in a different way? It is not about technique or expertise. Judgment is often personal. You may have two people with very similar expertise and experience, looking at exactly the same data and reaching two very different decisions, and that is okay.

If you wait for certainty, you will never make any decisions, and therefore you are not a leader.

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With full accountability

If you assume responsibility for your actions, not only are you an example for the team, but it also constrains the type of decisions you will make, because you know it is on you. It is very easy to make very bold decisions if somebody else pays.

A leader cannot have certainty. A leader can say: I have looked at everything, and I believe that under these circumstances, for this business, at this time, this is how we should move forward. I am bringing you with me, and it is my responsibility.

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What this does to authenticity

Authenticity as a unity, eternal and immovable, does not exist. The story changes depending on who I am talking to, depending on the environment, depending on a thousand factors. So which version is authentic? They are all authentic, and none of them is.

In the tradition that coined the term, authenticity means owning a self that is never finished. In the self-improvement industry’s version, it means relaxing into one that supposedly always was. A self can be real without being original, continuous without being fixed, sincere without being final.

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Seriously and provisionally

How can you take something seriously and hold it provisionally at the same time? The same way you do it every day, in every relationship, every career decision, every commitment that matters. You act before certainty arrives, because certainty never arrives. You commit to a direction knowing that the direction may need to change. You assume the responsibility of your action, even when it may lead to loss.

The alternative is one of two dead ends. The first is dogmatic certainty, the conviction that you have found the answer and need never revise. The second is perpetual flux, the refusal to commit to anything because everything might change. This is avoidance dressed as openness.

What you find here is a very summarized version of a longer argument, not an exhaustive explanation. If you want to find out more, contact me at info@federicomalatesta.com.