It might seem weird to put the ideas of leadership and ATVs in the same line. For those of you who have no idea (not sure how but I’m sure you exist) ATVs are those cool all terrain vehicles. I have one myself actually. I love my 4-wheeler! Tons of fun to go cruising through the field. Not to mention it’s super helpful to haul things around the property! Oh and don’t forget it’s how I plow my driveway. But that’s not really the ATV to which I’m referring.
I think leaders need a different kind of ATV in their lives. In a leader’s life, ATV stands for Authentic, Transparent, and Vulnerable. These are hyper critical elements that every leader needs to be effective and grow in her or his leadership capabilities.
Authentic
We start with authenticity. Authenticity is one of those hot button kind of words. More commonly we use words like genuine and real. Have you ever met someone who was just fake? I don’t mean they were a cartoon figure but they just didn’t live out who they said they were. Authenticity is the trait of being in real life who you say you are. When a person’s actions match their confession then they are authentic, genuine, real.
There are tons of examples of people who are just not authentic. We see it in many politicians and movie stars. They are people we look up to on the big screen. Then we get a glimpse into their personal lives and realize they might not be someone we want to look up to after all.
Leaders need to be people who are real or those who follow them won’t know who they are following. An authentic leader is one who is tested against their own words. When a leader is authentic, they can be trusted. A leader who is not authentic isn’t trustworthy or follow-worthy for that matter.
Transparent
This one is a bit more complicated for some leaders. There’s a fine line between being transparent and oversharing. This doesn’t mean that every leader has to air all of their dirty laundry in public. There are some things that no one really needs to know! So keep some of those behind closed door moments, behind the closed door of silence.
Being transparent is really about letting people see the real you. Between authenticity and transparency a leader is walking with the people he/she is leading. Transparency is the ability to say what’s going on and let people see inside. There are some emotional parts of our lives that we need to let people see into. Transparency is about admitting faults and asking for forgiveness when you’ve done wrong. Which leads us to the last part of this…
Vulnerable
Vulnerability is a tricky one. Leaders don’t like to be vulnerable. I’ll be honest this is one the harder ones for me as well. Letting people in means we have to trust them not to use what they see against us. Some people will take your authenticity and transparency to highlight your vulnerabilities and blast you with it. Those people are not people with whom you need to surround yourself.
Being vulnerable is really about lowering your guard enough to not just let people see inside but to have access to your weaknesses. And yes it takes trust – immense trust! But leadership requires trust as well. A good leader needs to be able to trust the people she is leading. The leader has to demonstrate that he isn’t above everyone else. When our authenticity and transparency give way to a level of vulnerability we become even more real and more relatable to those around us.
So in short, every good leader needs to have an ATV. We need to be real and authentic. We need to open ourselves up and show the real us even when we’re in charge. And we must do the hard work of letting our guard down and letting people in so we can expose some of those soft spots in our character.
Just like my ATV lets me ride over some pretty intense terrain, when as a leader you are willing to expose your true self through authenticity, transparency and vulnerably you will go places you could never go otherwise!
It’s time to ride friends!
