Hypocrite Means Actor

In ancient Greek theatre, the person on stage was a hypokritēs. The word meant an actor: someone who plays a part. It came into English around 1200 with a much darker meaning. A hypocrite is someone pretending to be what they're not.

The Romans had a similar word. Persona was the mask an actor wore. We still use it for the version of ourselves we put on in public.

So the language has been warning us for a couple of thousand years. Performing a character is a fine job on stage. Off stage, we have a much less flattering name for it.

I think about this whenever I watch a leader "being a leader".

Most executives have an idea in their heads of what a CEO is supposed to sound like. Measured. Commanding. A little bit distant. A vocabulary of "going forward", "key learnings" and "robust conversations". And so they spend years performing that character, then wonder why their people don't trust them.

The trouble is that acting convincingly is extraordinarily hard. Cate Blanchett has two Academy Awards because she can disappear into someone else and you never see the join. That takes talent and decades of training. Most CEOs have neither the talent nor the training for it, and it shows. Audiences can spot a performance a mile off, even if they can't say what's wrong. Something just doesn't ring true.

In my experience, there are only two kinds of people who can completely change who they are depending on the audience. One is the highly trained: great actors, world-class speakers. The other is the sociopath. If you're in the second group, I make no moral judgement. I just prefer to be paid up front.

For everyone else, the role isn't an option. You don't have a "manager voice", a "customer hat" or a "board persona". You have you, adjusted for the room. Your role shapes what you say, but it shouldn't change who's saying it.

That's what people mean, under all the buzz, when they talk about authentic leadership. Not oversharing. Not wearing a hoodie to the board meeting. Just a person whose words in the town hall match the person you meet in the corridor.

The best leaders I've worked with sound the same in both places. They don't play a leader. They lead, in their own voice, and people follow because they can tell there's no mask.

Leave the acting to Cate Blanchett. She's better at it than you.