The image of someone wearing a tuxedo with no underwear is certainly an image that certainly causes you to react! 

“Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” Frank Loyd Wright

Failure to Deliver

You’ve seen it!  There’s just that one individual who is all about the show but really doesn’t have the ability to function at the level they claim.  They talk a lot about what they can do, but when it comes to actually doing it they can’t deliver.  Their words and actions don’t line up at all.

These types of people can be very frustrating to those around them because they generally start out with a high degree of charisma.  They show up like a breath of fresh air and seem like a god send to the organization and the people in it.  Their bloviating about their ability initially makes people feel like something major is about to happen.  But all to often these people turn out to be all talk and no action.  On the outside everything looks great, but underneath there’s nothing there.

Quite often, they may even have a significant degree of charisma that makes people really like to be around them.  They can even be fun loving and outgoing.  You know, they can really come across as the life of the party. 

Emotional Intelligence?

These people not only lack an understanding of how inept they are, but are missing a high degree of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and humility.  The reality is that these people not only damage the organization, but also the people they work with and the customer they serve.  While they may initially seem to be the answer to an organizational prayer, they end up bringing stress, anxiety, and dysfunction into the workplace.

People are willing to pay for the services they receive when they feel that the value they receive in exchange improves their lives.  People are even willing to work with an individual who can be extreme on the self-confidence scale when they feel the value they get in return is worth it.

Other euphemisms that come to mind when describing these people include

• “What you see isn’t always what you get.”
• “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
• “Wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
• “Slick tongued devil.”
• “Inch deep and a mile wide.”

Unfortunately, this issue doesn’t only occur with individuals though.  You can see this play out within organizations as well.  They’ve managed to come up with some pretty phenomenal mission, vision, and values statements to hang on the wall.  They constantly point to these statements and truly believe that they’re serving their customer and staff well.  Their culture is more about looking good than it is about being effective.

All Flash!

These organizations even have some phenomenal social media campaigns.  You see them posting about activities that don’t bring value to the mission.  Specific to the fire service, you’ll see agencies who have a 1 to 2 percent breakdown of fire calls trying to brand themselves as being “FIRE” but totally avoid the fact that the super majority of their work has to do with anything but “FIRE”.  You’ll see these organizations market themselves as being 75% emergency medical services and 25 % “FIRE” during their recruiting campaigns when the reality is they’re 75% emergency medical services, 2% “FIRE”, and 23% everything else (funny smells, false alarms, cats in drains, etc).

Whether you’re leading individuals or an organization, you have strive to ensure these people don’t stay around long enough to damage the culture and create a toxic work environment.  They send a false message to the rest of the team, and the taxpayer  You also have to work to ensure that the organization doesn’t begin to slip into this false bravado that leads to an inability to serve the customer.  While these people and organizations aren’t necessarily mean, they are in effect incompetent.  Just like the toxic employee, this type of poison must be rooted out.  It cannot be allowed to exist.

Easy Way Out

It doesn’t matter if its an individual or an entire organization, operating under false pretenses creates a false sense of security and false expectations when it comes time to “pay the piper”.  In the words of Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chief Information Officer at ManpowerGroup, in a recent Harvard Business Review article, “the problem then, it seems, is not that we lack the means to spot incompetence, but that we more often choose to be seduced by it” How to Spot an Incompetent Leader.  Its easier to fall into the pomp and circumstance than it is to do the grinding work that produces results

Now more than ever, people want authenticity in their leaders.  They also want authenticity in the organizations they rely on.  There’s a reason why a high level of distrust exists when it comes to government services.  As a leader it is incumbent upon you to be authentic.  It’s time to take off the tuxedo and make sure you are fully dressed to do the work you are required to do.

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.” Stephen Covey