The Inner Work of Authentic Leadership

This is part 2 of a 4-part conversation on authentic leadership.

Self-awareness isn’t optional if you want to lead authentically. In this episode, author and executive coach Jim Fielding explores the personal barriers that prevent leaders from showing up as their true selves. From trauma and identity to DISC profiles and 360 reviews, Jim shares the internal tools and honest moments that shaped his leadership journey — and how understanding your own story helps you lead with empathy, clarity, and presence. Jim is an executive coach and the author of All Pride, No Ego: A Queer Executive’s Journey on Living and Leading Authentically.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: I'm glad you brought up hiring. I'm gonna get back to that in a second.

Jim Fielding: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: I'm thrilled that we sort of set the table on what authenticity is and isn't. Now I wanna move into understanding ourselves better. So one of the biggest pieces of relationships at work is our relationships with ourselves.

So...

Jim Fielding: Oh gosh, yes.

Russel Lolacher: What would you say are some of the internal barriers we put in front of ourselves to prevent us from being truly authentic?

Jim Fielding: Well, I mean, listen, we all have that inner voice or an inner saboteur, as I say. You know, I write in my book, mine's named Jiminy Cricket and he can be good or he can be bad, right? Like he sits on one shoulder and reinforces my good behavior. But he also can give me lots of insecurities and self-doubt.

And so I think a lot of it is going through some of that work younger in your career to really understand there's so many tools now that you can, I mean, you know, personality tests, you know, assessments where you can really dive in and look at yourself and say, what am I good at? And what am I not good at?

What do I like to do and what do I not like to do? And by the way, again, we all have that story. We're all human beings. We all have strengths. We all have developmental opportunities, we all have outright weaknesses. And I think, you know, a lot of the tools that I've used, you know, DISC and Myers-Briggs and 16 Personalities.

Not only does it show your quote, normal personality or your normal traits, it shows how you react under stress. And I think that was really interesting for me because I changed a lot under stress and I tended to be not a very good manager under stress. And I wore my stress on my face, like I can never play poker.

And that was a huge insight for me earlier in my career is that by nature being in retail and media and entertainment, there's stressful indu industries. You're dealing with deadlines, you're dealing with changes in the marketplace, and I had to learn how to kind of be a sponge on that stress and maintain calm and maintain professionalism because what I learned in my leadership style, I could swing an entire team's mood just by my mood.

And I only learned that by going through some of this work and going and doing some of these assessments and getting the feedback. I also think one of the tools I use, and I know a lot of your listeners use it, I did a 360 review and more than once, and for those of you who don't know, a 360 review means you asked people that work for you, people that you work for, peers, and even people in your family life to answer a survey about yourself.

It's all anonymous. You can tell like what their relationship is. Well, peer, it depends on how many you ask, right? If you only ask one family member, you're gonna know what family members say. But I always tried to ask a pretty big pool. That probably was the most illuminated. And again, that was at Disney. I did a couple 360 reviews and I definitely changed my style after that 360 review. So there are, especially these day and age with tech advancements, there's plenty of tools, free tools you can take online to like even learn about yourself. But I felt like the 360 review was probably one of the biggest tools for me.

Russel Lolacher: So I'm hearing one of the biggest superpowers I talk about for leaders is their self-awareness. You have to start there. You have to start there. So. How is self-awareness key in that? Because I mean, we're, knowing yourself is great. These tools are fantastic, but it's also a matter of understanding like how you grew up, your socioeconomic situation.

And I, it, I, I like tools. I've taken quite a few myself.

Jim Fielding: Yeah, yeah,

But it doesn't provide a lot of context. It provides a lot of, here's a word, you're courageous 'cause you fit within the 79 words that we've provided. Which is helpful and informative, but it's not personalized as much as you think. And if we're talking about authenticity, I feel like we need to get a little bit more personal.

Russel Lolacher: I guess where I wanted to sort of move that is you talked earlier about degrees of authenticity.

Jim Fielding: Mm-hmm.

Russel Lolacher: So if we better understand ourselves, which is great and really important to do, how do we know which degree we're showing up going? You know what, I am too much in these certain situations. Wow. I fly off the handle real easily in these situations.

Jim Fielding: Mm-hmm.

Russel Lolacher: So...

Jim Fielding: I pop, right?

Russel Lolacher: How do we know where the flags are? The beige, the green, and the red ones so we can adjust in the workplace for ourselves. Mm-hmm.

Jim Fielding: No, no, I think, I think you're, well you're basically doing a commercial for executive coaching and in some cases therapy. But I think if people. Do not have the ability or the means to access, you know, personal like therapy, psychology or executive coaching, which are two very different things by the way.

I think part of it is then being able to make mistakes and try some things like test and roll and then own it enough to say that you're testing rolling. So for me, for example. I grew up with childhood trauma. I mean, I am, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. I grew up with an alcoholic home. My mom was, was an alcoholic. Functioning alcoholic, but alcoholic.

I suffered with, you know, my sexuality and accepting myself as as a gay man. So, I had to work through that trauma. To your point, that childhood trauma, because some of my reactions to your point of context was because I was the adult child of an alcoholic and I was used to being a control freak because I was in a situation where my sometimes my home life was not in control and I became hyper controlling because at a very young age, I was helping my mom a lot and trying to keep stuff together. And so I learned that through therapy and also frankly, going to Al-Anon, right? So I needed to go get some outside help to understand that because to your point, that was the context. Now, that's one of the things that I was asked when I, when I was interviewing for a job. Or I tell people to ask, interviewing for a job.

Are mental health services included in your benefits? Many companies have where you get 10 sessions for $20 co-pay or something. That's, I mean, I accessed that my entire career. Like I, I went to therapy for a long time. I had an executive coach at Disney. That was an incredible benefit for me. I think that's why I went into executive coaching myself.

But I think what you're talking about is very personal and is a journey to understanding yourself. I was a journaler. I went back and read journals from when I had kept my journals the whole time. I went back to understand myself better 'cause I had forgotten some of that stuff. And I also had, luckily I have an incredible sibling relationship.

I have one sister, a younger sister who is a truth teller. She's probably the most direct person in my life who frankly calls me on my bs. And you know, like my favorite phrases where you wake up, Russel, is like when somebody in your personal life, like a spouse or a partner, or your sister says, I don't work for you. Stop managing me. And you're like, woo. That to me is hit me with a wet towel, right? I mean, slap me hard. And she would say to me, you're not, you're not being real right now. You're not really, you know, you're playing a role like I want. And she calls me, my dad's name was Jim. So I, to her and my niece is, I'm Jimmy, right?

And she's I want Jimmy right now. I don't want Disney Jim, I don't want Dreamworks Jim, I want Jimmy. So I, I say to people, and I know, you know this concept, I say, form your board of directors, your board of advisors early in your career, and have people who are gonna advise you, you know, beyond mentoring.

Like I think there's roles on a board of advisors, just like when you build up corporate board of directors when you're a CEO, right? And that truth teller is one of the roles on the board of advisors. And you know, for me it happened to be my sister and happens to be my sister. She still cries BS on me.

Russel Lolacher: It's so important to have that circle of friends and a network, and I don't think enough people do. Or they think it's people at work that have to be that when it could be anybody and everybody. You just need to have a connection. It's about relationships to...

Jim Fielding: it is

Russel Lolacher: Benefit yourself.

Jim Fielding: It, it is. And I think when people get too formal about it, Russel, and they say, oh, I need to get a mentor, or I need to build a network, and they make it again very performative and like a to-do list. It's like it's kind of gotta happen naturally, but, but my advice to your point is do it earlier in your career.

I probably did it a little bit later and you know, my... I had a great peer mentor who was somebody at my same level, and I still have a peer mentor who had, was outside my industry right? But did my same role, but outside of retail and media, right? And so. I think that's really important too, because sometimes they have to be outside your company.

They have to be sometimes outside your industry because otherwise you kind of get into that echo chamber, right? And it's basically like a feedback loop that's not really as honest as it could be. But I, I had mentors my entire career, but I tell people this all the time, you know? It's the mentee's job to have a productive mentor relationship, and it's not the mentor's relationship to make it productive.

It is the mentee's job to make it productive. So...

Russel Lolacher: Can authenticity change or definition of authenticity change throughout it? Because as you said, it started early, there's a lot of challenges and trauma that you overcame. So what you thought was authentic before may have changed with that knowledge.

Jim Fielding: Hmm. For Sure. I mean, I started. mean, not to get into the book, but I started my career in the closet. I, went to work in the eighties, like people were not out at work in the eighties for the young listeners to your podcast. I spent the first three, almost four years of my career in the closet living a double light.

I was not living authentic, but I was being safe. I brought up that word earlier because it was not an environment that I could live as an out gay man. And, I made the choice to leave that company and go to another company because I was ready to embrace my, my story more and to live as an out gay man.

So to your point, my authenticity changed. My story didn't change. Like it was still the same story, but again, that degrees of authenticity, it changes. And I also think the old adage, as you get older, you get wiser is true, right? You learn new things. You learn new skills. You learn what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you like, what you don't like.

There's new tools. Before we started this, you and I were talking about AI and all these new things that are coming on, right? I, I think anybody listening to this never worked for me. If I, if they knew that I was spending 5, 6, 10 hours a week on graphic design, they'd laugh because I'm not a graphic designer.

But now I need to be. So I, I think it changes, your story, changes your authenticity. Changes. What doesn't change in my mind is your commitment to authenticity.

Russel Lolacher: Love that. Love that. Look at that little, I almost had, I almost wanted to give you a space at the end of that. Just go period. Done. Like sir.

Jim Fielding: Yeah.