Lots of people, it turns out. New research from the Kellogg School finds that leaders who admit their mistakes are seen as more authentic but no less competent than those who don’t, and that employees prefer to work with leaders who admit their flaws.
In a way, it’s an intuitive idea, he explains Mariam Kouhakiprofessor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School and co-author of the study with Li Jiang of George Washington University, Leslie K. John of Harvard University and Reihane Boghrati of Arizona State University. “When we make ourselves vulnerable and when we share some of our failures and challenges, we come across as more authentic,” she says – and that’s a highly desirable quality in leaders.
The biggest challenge was proving that the specific act of sharing a weakness led to increased perceptions of authenticity. “Our approach was to show this effect in convincing ways across multiple studies,” says Koutsaki.
She’s afraid of public speaking — and authentic
For the first of these studies, researchers recruited 298 working professionals who were randomly divided into a control group and an experimental group. Online participants were asked to imagine that they were hired at a virtual investment firm and were meeting managers with whom they could choose to work if they wished. They then read a statement from one of those potential managers.
In the control group, the manager’s statement included a simple description of his career path and interests outside of work. In the experimental group, the manager also revealed a fear of public speaking. Participants then rated the manager’s authenticity, warmth, and competence.
Admitting a fear of public speaking made the manager appear more authentic but not less warm or competent, the results showed—a pattern that consistently emerged in several subsequent experiments in which the researchers varied, among other things, their specific weakness and gender leader. (The discovery that both men and women can benefit from admitting failure came as a surprise to Koutsakis: “At first, my intuition was that we might only see this for men.)
They also replicated their findings when they tried using a video message from an actual Google executive instead of a written statement, and when they conducted an in-person experiment in which participants played the role of either the manager or the employee. Again, participants viewed leaders who admitted to small fears and flaws as more authentic than those who did not.
Employees prefer vulnerable and authentic leaders
The first group of studies showed that vulnerable leaders are perceived as more authentic. But does authenticity make leaders more attractive? To answer this question, researchers recruited a new group of 400 working professionals for an online experiment that tested whether people prefer to work with leaders who admit to vulnerability.
The researchers randomly divided the participants into two groups, managers and employees. Managers and employees were paired for a four-minute “get to know” text conversation. Before the interview, the researchers had instructed half the managers to reveal a personal weakness, such as occasional tardiness or procrastination during the interview.
After the conversation, employees were asked to rate the manager’s authenticity. They were also asked whether they would prefer to be paired with the same manager for a subsequent experimental task or receive a new pairing (although in reality, there was no subsequent task).
Not only were managers who disclosed weaknesses perceived as more authentic, the researchers found, but participants were also more willing to work for them in another job, suggesting that being perceived as authentic isn’t just better in theory—it has positive and practical consequences, too. .
Strategic self-presentation and authenticity
Finally, researchers have begun to understand why we perceive self-disclosure as more authentic.
In another experiment, Kouhaki and her colleagues recruited a new group of participants and repeated a slightly modified version of the first experiment, about the fictitious investment firm. (In this case, the manager revealed a different weakness—his struggle to adapt to new technology.) In addition to asking participants about the manager’s authenticity, warmth, and competence, they also asked participants whether his statement manager seemed to be calculating.
Participants who didn’t hear about the struggles with the new technology found the manager more calculating than those who learned about the flaw, the researchers found. In other words, admitting failure is perceived as a non-strategic move. Subsequent analysis revealed a chain reaction: revealing a weakness makes someone’s behavior seem less calculated, which in turn makes that person seem more authentic.
This helps explain another important finding the researchers identified. To be considered authentic, vulnerable self-disclosures must be considered voluntary. When the researchers repeated the investment firm experiment again, but revealed to some participants that the manager had been asked to admit a personal failure in his statement, the boost to perceived authenticity disappeared.
“The voluntary nature of this is really important,” he says. People see you as truly authentic “when you’re truly intimate and vulnerable.”
Why leaders shouldn’t be afraid to open up
Of course, notes Kouhaki, the type of revelation matters. Admitting you’re sometimes late is one thing – but lying on expense reports or being rude to waiters is another.
“There’s a sweet spot here,” he says. Personal weaknesses are more likely to promote perceptions of inauthenticity than significant moral weaknesses.
However, many leaders are afraid to admit even these smallest weaknesses – and that’s a shame, because it’s a valuable way to build trust and relationships with employees. It’s a lesson Kouhaki says she tries to impart to her MBA students: “Trust people more than you’re comfortable with. It’s okay to feel a little uncomfortable.”
