A Leader’s Personality Permeates Their Organization

“I wish there was more candor and transparency around my company,” said the CEO to a trusted friend.

The friend raised an eyebrow and gave the CEO a long look. “That’s interesting. How candid and transparent do you think you are? And what would your team say if I had the opportunity to ask them?”

The CEO got the point. He was setting the example, and it wasn’t a very good one.

As a leader, unless you are very careful, you will imbue your organization with some of your own weak points.

Over time, your personality—plus some of your foibles and strengths—are all going to permeate into the culture and the way in which your business runs. Being conscious of this is vitally important because the things that often frustrate us the most are the things that we most are frustrated with in ourselves.

So, if you’re not good with candor, or you tend to be bad at accountability, or you sometimes get stuck in analysis paralysis, or you like complexity so much that you have a tendency to overcomplicate things… your entire business may adopt such characteristics.

Your direct reports may make everything more complicated than it needs to be because they know you appreciate complexity. They’re going to try and give you all the nuances of every issue instead of driving to action or clear recommendations.

Is this what you want? Do you want to infect your company with your least effective qualities?

If not, then you will need to become hyper-aware of your own qualities that bother you, and take thoughtful steps to shield your organization from them.

You might hire a COO or Chief of Staff who keeps things simple and to the point.

You might keep each meeting short, so that you constrain your ability to go as deep as you like.

If candor is an issue, you could hire a coach to help you be more transparent.

In a perfect world, a leader will imbue his or her organization with their best qualities, but not their worst. This is not as hard as it may sound. Once you understand your weaknesses, you can enlist others to help you guard against and/or compensate for them. You can also design systems and processes to magnify your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

And finally, all leaders should rigorously check in on the state of the culture at least once a year. Most cultures are not static, so what is moving in the desired direction, and where might you be sending signals that are undermining the effectiveness of the organization?