What Authentic Leadership Really Looks Like

This is part 1 of a 4-part conversation on authentic leadership.

Authenticity is often used as a leadership buzzword — but what does it actually mean? 

In this episode, Jim Fielding, executive coach and author of All Pride, No Ego, shares his clear and human-centered definition of authentic leadership. Drawing on his experience as a former executive at Disney, DreamWorks, and Fox, Jim explains how authenticity creates psychological safety, the importance of adapting in “the grey,” and why creating space for people to bring their whole selves is good for business — and culture.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show we have Jim Fielding and here is why he is awesome. He's an executive coach, professional speaker and author. He's bringing 30 years of experience in leadership roles at globally renowned companies such as 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks Animation and Disney Store Worldwide.

He has a national bestseller with his book, All Pride, No Ego- A Queer -Executive's Journey on Living and Leading Authentically, and it's that last word that we're gonna be digging in today, and he's here with us as well. Hello, Jim.

Jim Fielding: Hello. Such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Russel Lolacher: We're gonna get authentic. We're gonna dig deep into it. Before we do any of that, Jim, I have to ask you the one question I ask all of my guests to kick this off, which is, what is your sir, best or worst employee experience?

Jim Fielding: My best employee experience was being president of Disney Store for sure from 2008 to 2012, and it was I was managed correctly. The person I was working for led me correctly. He was a great boss. His name's Andy Mooney. And the team that I was able to put together and the mission and vision we were on, it was just, it was probably the best time in my career for feeling like everybody was kind of rowing in the same direction and we knew what we were trying to accomplish.

In fact, I posted a video about it this week that I found on YouTube from 14 years ago, and it was just nice to reconnect with a lot of those cast members from them.

Russel Lolacher: So I'm gonna get you to drill down just a little bit more because I mean, those are great. They are very rare actually, for a lot of people when they're.

Jim Fielding: So rare. So rare.

Russel Lolacher: When they're trying to find direction, when they're trying to find a team that speaks their language. So what do you feel like leadership did for you there that provided that experience?

Jim Fielding: Hmm. Well, I mean, it's interesting because I was, I was in that position for four years. I had Andy Mooney for three years and another leader for one year, which is part of the worst story, which we can get into if you want to. But what Andy was really good. He was the kind of leader who set very clear goals, very clear expectations, and got out of your way.

Like he was not a micromanager, right? He knew I was, he had hired me to be a President of Disney store, gave me that job, and so he gave me qualitative and quantitative goals. And then basically was like, if you need me, you know where I am. But I think the other thing he was, and when you work at a company the size of Disney and, and any of your listeners that have worked there or known someone that's worked there, you need a boss who has your back, frankly. Right? Because it is a, it's a political, and most big corporations have politics, but Disney definitely is a political organization. And, so I was doing a lot with Disney Store. I was reinventing Disney Store. You know, Disney had bought the Disney store back from an outside licensee and I was put into this job with a very large budget, but also very high expectations. Basically, between you and me, don't f it up, right? Make money, but make it a good experience. Make it a brand experience. The whole bit. And I felt that pressure. And the only way I got through it is that Andy had my back the entire time. Because let's face it, we made mistakes. There was things we didn't do. And for your listeners, and you know, Russel, I took over in May of 2008. The global mortgage crisis.

You know, the financial impact was August, September, 2008. So here I am, the new president of Disney Store, three or four months in building a team, and the business dropped out, like 50% drops. And luckily Bob Iger, who was the CEO of Disney, Andy Mooney, who was my boss, the board stuck with it, right? Because they could have easily pulled the plug and said, we're not gonna spend this money. It's a horrible time to be in retail. And they kept us going. And so what that did for me was give you that adrenaline boost to be like, I'm gonna figure this out. I felt supported, I felt enabled. And I say when you talk about authenticity, they got the best of Jim Fielding, like they got me 24/7 and I was pushing myself and pushing the team, and I think we did things with Disney Store that had never been done before.

Russel Lolacher: It really hammers home the importance that leaders need great leaders too.

Jim Fielding: Of course. 

Russel Lolacher: But it's, and sadly it's not as, of course. Like we treat, we treat leaders like go out and figure it out. We'll, we'll help you with your management, we'll help you with delivery. But it's that motivation, inspiration, direction, all the shuns, like all, all the things that really a leader needs so they know which way to point the, point the boat.

And that's a great example of that.

Jim Fielding: Yeah. And, and he was really good. I mean, it's interesting you bring that up Russel. 'cause he was really good at course corrections. That's another shun, right? If he thought I was veering the wrong way, or we weren't going in the right direction, he was good at giving me feedback. And I have always said my entire life, and it's interesting that I'm a coach now, I'm coachable.

I've always been coachable. I've always accepted feedback. It doesn't mean it was easy, it doesn't mean, there weren't times that I was like, that was horrible feedback. I don't agree, but, but I am coachable. And he understood that and he knew, he understood that it took small course corrections. It wasn't sweeping call me into the office and you know, you've completely messed this up and you need to change everything and fire 50 people.

He would never be like that, but it would be, he'd plant seeds. He understood planting seeds of, Hmm, maybe you should look at that differently. And our offices were about 20 minutes apart in two different Disney buildings. And that 20 minute drive back to my office, from his office, I'd always be ruminating the entire time of like, what did he mean by that? What did that really mean? And, and I would make a correction based and that was perfect. Because that was like slightly turning my head, you know what I mean? It wasn't slapping me down and saying, you really screwed that up. It was like, how about you think of this differently, Jim? Think of it from a slightly different angle. And I, I appreciated that tremendously.

Russel Lolacher: Empowerment with direction. It's, oh, that's the, that's the sweet sauce there, Jim.

Jim Fielding: Totally. And support. And support to make mistakes. I think that's the other thing, Russel, like I, we made mistakes. He didn't call me and be like, well, that was dumb. Because he knew that I was beating myself up first, anyway. I didn't need him. But, but he also would call and say, that's okay. You took a swing and it was a miss. Like you don't, we used to, I mean, he. He, he had come from Nike, so he was a sports guy. Luckily, I love sports too. And he did. He'd do a lot of, well, you went for the home run and you should have gone for a single. There was a lot of those kind of conversations.

And I got it, right? Like you went for the three point shot, you should have gone for the layup. I like that made sense to me. I was like, okay, I got it.

Russel Lolacher: Well, Jim, for this episode, we like to set the table. We like to get a little clarity and with our topic today do being about authenticity, I think the most important thing we need to do to start off is defining what the hell we're even talking about. Because what one person thinks is authentic could be very different from another.

So let's make sure we're singing from the same song sheet here. How do you define authenticity, especially in relation to leadership?

Jim Fielding: Yeah, I mean, I, I really give full credit to Brene Brown because I use a version of her definition. I think you know, I, her TEDTalk from like 2012, I think it is on authenticity, really struck with, stuck with me. And to me, my simple definition of authenticity is creating safe physically and psychologically safe spaces where people are allowed to bring them full selves to that environment, right?

Whether that be a community or a workspace or a family. And when I say their full selves. Their good, their bad, their ugly, their warts, their, their talents, their opportunities. You know, it's, it's really you accept the person unconditionally and I, it's all rooted for me and we've talked before, Russel, it's all rooted for me in storytelling in that everybody has a unique story, right?

Like even though we're all human beings, we all have unique, we all have unique DNA, we all have a unique story. And to me, I always wanted as a leader to create that environment where they got to live their full story, because my theory was that that meant I got the best productivity outta them. If they weren't worrying about playing a role or not being themselves, then that freed up their mind to be innovative and creative, and they actually enjoyed coming to work.

And I always thought, I think authentic leadership is very human centered leadership and I think it's an offshoot of servant leadership actually, where I always felt it was the leader's job to set that tone and to set that environment. In the olden days, I would, it would've been called situational leadership, meaning not everybody needed to be managed exactly the same way.

That you as a leader had to identify and modify yourself to bring the best out of a team. And I, and I think that works if your team is three people, you know 30 ,300 or, you know, I had teams up to 10,000. I mean, so. It. I, I really felt that, that it was my job and it was actually my executive team's job to create that it's culture to create that culture of authenticity.

Russel Lolacher: So what are we getting wrong? Because we throw authenticity around like it's a keyword or an SEO exercise. So what are we getting wrong with this definition?

Jim Fielding: I mean, I think, I think some people, and I get asked this a lot, like on the tour and on my speaking gigs, by the way, there are degrees of authenticity, right? There are, you know, I always talk about like having a code switcher on my arm, right? Of that. I read a room and I read a situation deciding like how authentic I'm gonna go, and that doesn't mean I'm being inauthentic.

It just means, again, sometimes you need to set boundaries about how much you're gonna share. Sometimes it's inappropriate for certain workspaces or certain cultures to share your full story. Some people are uncomfortable with the full story or the emotions. Again, I think you have to adapt, and I think, I think what we tend to get wrong in authentic leadership is it's everybody treats it as very black or white, like on or off. And I actually think it's gray. And I think all great leaders and managers know you are leading in the gray and that you have to adapt and, and change as circumstances change, as your team changes. And I think the culture, like the foundation of your culture can be there, but your culture changes every time you bring on a new hire, every time you, you know, change a department or an org structure. And I like it because to me, the culture is a living organism, right? Because it's made up of human beings. Human beings have challenges. Human beings change. Human beings grow. Human, human beings have different needs.

Again, you need to adapt. And I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make with authentic leadership is I'm gonna be authentic. You know, I'm gonna be on a hundred all day. And I'm like, no. That's not the way it is. Like there's shades, you know, there's a lever. A lot of it gets wrapped up in, that I was, that I had a bias in hiring, right? Oh, I only wanted to hire I mean, I, I remember people saying, oh, Jim only wants to hire cheerleaders or extroverts. And I'm like, what? No way. Like I want the entire, I want everybody, and by the way, everybody thinks I'm an extrovert. I'm actually an ambivert.

I'm an extrovert and introvert. I need my introvert time as much as any, I'm not a full introvert. And I, I'm really proud when I look back at my teams, especially the last 10 or 15 years of my career, that you would look at my team and we looked unique, we looked different, we looked, and I loved that kind of stew of everybody having different points of view and different experiences and different backgrounds.

I love that, especially when you're in a consumer face. I was always in consumer facing industries, so I, I felt it was important to be representative.

Russel Lolacher: Is diversity a measuring stick? So I'm kind of curious that from a, from authenticity, even with shades, what is, what is your level of knowing that this organization's authentic, or I know this team is being authentic. How do we know?

Jim Fielding: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I, I think part of what we're going through right now in diversity or DEI is this performative of like counting and I never, I personally never liked that counting thing. I always tried to talk about representation and I basically wanted to look around a room, and in diversity there's visible diversity and there's invisible diversity, and I always wanted to look around a room of employees or a team and say, is there, is there a diversity of thought? Is there a diversity of experience? Is there a diversity of background? Because again, I thought that mixture brought the best results out, particularly again in creative consumer facing industries. I think if people thought diversity was counting like how many of a certain race you had or how many of a certain gender you had, or how many of a certain sexuality you had, that's when it became very performative and very frankly, people got angry about that. I think, I think it's more about, to me, I see diversity or belonging inclusion cultures as a competitive advantage because the, and a business imperative because the employee pool that you're pulling from, particularly for me, I spent most of my career in California.

If I tried to hire a certain gender or race only. I wouldn't have had a pool to pull from. I mean, I wouldn't, and, and my thing, and I think any hiring manager says I wanted the best and the brightest. I wanted the most innovative, the, the, the most intelligent, the most experienced. And that was, I was colorblind. I was gender blind, I was gender identification blind because I was going for the best and the brightest. And to me, the, you know, and I'm working really hard right now, Russel, as you know, to try and get this story out of whatever DEI 2.0 is gonna be, because DEI, even though, you know, everybody says they're rolling it back and people aren't doing it.

You have no choice if you're going to be a leader, particularly in the United States. We're only getting more diverse. We're not getting less diverse. We're just not.

Russel Lolacher: Is, this is where I struggle a bit with authenticity and terms like bringing your full self to work. I agree with it in practice, but what if your full self is an asshole? Like authentically people are, can be horrible. They can be. I'm bringing my full self. I'm just saying it like it is, right.

Jim Fielding: Thousand percent. I love this question, Russel, and you're not the first person to ask me this. I get asked this a lot on the road. By the way, being, being an asshole or doing something unethical or doing something illegal. And you can't sit there and say, well, I'm, that's authentic. I'm gonna cook the books.

That's my authenticity. That's not, no, I mean, that is a performance issue. That is a communication. And by the way, I addressed performance issues my entire career. I put people on performance improvement plans. I fired people for not performing their job correctly, and I laid people off. I mean, honestly, when you worked at Disney, we reorged every year, whether we were up 20% or down 20%. And so I learned how to manage reductions in force and I learned how to. But you do not accept... that's not an acceptable answer for bad behavior. That's just pure bad behavior. And it's like, that's fine if that's your 100% identity. First off, you probably weren't a right hire.

And I would say in that case, like I would've tried to pick that up in the recruiting and the interviewing. But, no, it, it does not give you, and it does not give you a right, even though I believe in freedom of speech and stuff, you can't go around a building and be a bully and, and, you know, tell people they're not worthy or they're doing their job wrong.

That doesn't work either. I mean, there are fundamental rules of working on a team and fundamental rules of working for companies that are foundational to team success, that have nothing to do with authenticity. And that might be your authenticity. Some people are meaner other people. But again, you, you better learn how to control it in a work environment or you won't be part of the team.

Russel Lolacher: It also goes back to definitions. What's mean to you might not be mean to somebody else. It might just be direct. Right. Might be, yeah.

Jim Fielding: Yeah, and I think as a leader, you know, this Russel, if I was having that issue with somebody, it's not that I'm just walking in and firing them. I would be sitting down with them and saying, what is going on? Why are you like, why are you walking around the, the office being so difficult to work with?

Is there something fundamentally going on that we need to understand that we need to fix? There may be a systemic problem or maybe there's something going on at home that I don't know about, but you're bringing it into the office and if you're comfortable with sharing it, I wanna help you.

Particularly if it's a behavior change, right? If you've had an employee for two years and all of a sudden their behavior changes, again, it's your job to try and get into it without violating their confidentiality, without putting them in an awkward position. But to me, authenticity in the cultures I build, and I'm so glad you brought this up, it starts with the recruiting process and it starts in the interview process, right? It's as you're building the team, because if you hire someone who is an individual contributor and they've been an individual contributor their entire life, and then you put them in and say, I want you to work on a team of 10, that's not being fair to them because that's, again, their authenticity is they like to work in a cubicle and do their job and you know, they don't really wanna work on a team. But if the job you're hiring for requires team work and team building, then you probably didn't hire correctly.