Leadership and sales have at least one thing in common. They are both mentally demanding roles. Why? Because in both of them, it is not about you, but about them. And if somebody tells you that you should be authentic, turn around and never speak to them again.
Who are they? Who are the people that leadership and sales are about? Leadership is about your people. Sales is about your customers’ people. As a leader, I worked with thousands of people and took responsibility for them. As a seller, probably even more. If I listened to the “authenticity mantra”, I would probably not walk this earth anymore, since I don’t think all of them would find “my authenticity” acceptable.
If you are in a position where you have one too many relationships with different individuals and those relationships define your success and, as a consequence, can influence the quality of your life, you must be smart enough to adjust. If you don’t have that capability, don’t go into leadership or sales.
But adjusting your authenticity is mentally demanding. There is always a line in that adjustment; the line is your fundamental values. If respect and transparency are non-negotiable for you, and you don’t believe that you can actively influence performance-oriented human relationships (don’t think for a moment that business is anything else as performance oriented activity), that is your trigger to get out of such a relationship. But let’s say that we don’t reach that line, let’s say that we are still being flexible inside the acceptable perimeters, it still isn’t easy. Not being you for a moment, so that you allow others to be them and by doing so giving yourself a chance to succeed through others is a necessity in sales and leadership, but hard to cope with, sometimes.
How to make your life a little easier:
- Make sure you really want to be a leader or a seller.
- Accept that it will not be about you.
- Find joy in exploring different paths in relationship building that will improve your performance probability through the extension of your capabilities by involving others.
- Left your ego outside, don’t take everything personally, avoid judgments, and incorporate every interaction into goal-oriented performance practice.
- Be prepared to change under the influence of good practice and be flexible to context change.
- If you need recharging mechanisms outside of performance-oriented environments, be relentless in using them.
Leadership and sales is not about loving people and interactions, but about loving the challenge of being an active part of a business environment, is about loving the responsibility and chance to have an influence. Whatever you make of it, it is your choice, just don’t fall into the authenticity trap and try to be only you in the world, where it is not about you.
