Two thoughts grabbed my attention yesterday. First watching the news there is a lot of press about the use of airbrushing in photography and the impact on young children. Second, I went with my son to see Cars 2 (I didn’t See Cars) and was struck by some comments made by a key character in the film.
First a cosmetics giant has been forced to act after a watchdog found that consumers had been misled by digitally manipulated images of the stars. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint by Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat MP, who claimed the retouched images misled consumers by exaggerating the results the products could achieve. Essentially airbrushing means that women and young girls are being bombarded with images of people with perfect skin, perfect hair and perfect figures that are impossible to live up to. So this false presentation of false body images to young people will cause them to turn to short term enhancing measures as opposed to accepting and embracing the aging process.
Secondly the star of Cars 2 is a rusty old tow truck called Tow Mater. Mater is out of sync with those around him because he doesn’t fit in with the jet set crowd. In the second movie his best friend Lightning rejects him for not fitting in with the crowd because he doesn’t look the part. As the plot unfolds he is given the opportunity to have his dents removed. But surprisingly he retorts, “You can’t touch my dents,” says Mater. “I got every one of them dents with my best buddy Lightning McQueen.” Critically Mater recognised that his dents did not detract from who he was – in fact the dents were a record of his past achievements as he towed cars to safety.
These two made me think that although the world of Airbrushing tends to drive a society that places a perfect body on a pedestal – there is also a temptation to place a perfect ‘inner self’ on a pedestal as well. In the Lead Yourself book – I argue that before we have the moral right to lead someone else that we need to look inside and learn to lead ourselves first. Essentially what moral right do we have to airbrush out someone else’s ‘Dents” if we haven’t had the courage to understand and manage our own.
Inner personal leadership means that we must be prepared to look into our secret shadows and shine a light on the thoughts, feelings and behaviours we have tried to supress or airbrush away. For example, with me it was a long journey to accept my alcoholism. I tried to airbrush my addiction away by cavalier statement of ‘I am just a social drinker’, ‘the government says that one glass of wine a day is good for you – so a bottle can’t hurt’. Or the classic ‘I will stop tomorrow’. My drive to airbrush away the problems is in many ways like the regular use of Botox or some other age defying tool. One day the past catches up you cant airbrush any more without looking slightly. At this point the truth will out. And boy does it out with a bang.
The other thing about airbrushing is that we all know that these actresses and actors are not perfect. In fact the tabloids cash in on this in showing us the star opening the door in the morning to get their milk and splashing how they really look across the front page. In the same way that we all know what the star will look like first thing in the morning – we are generally able to sense someone’s inner dents. We meet people who are full of bravado, who always supposedly have perfect lives and who never admit to having any personal fears. But as Malcolm Gladwell explores in his book Blink, we all have the gift of rapid cognition. This is the perception of others that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. In those two seconds, conclusions we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good. Although we think we might be able to airbrush away our inner scars and dents – in most cases they show in one-way or another. Like ‘Tells” in a poker game – we leak our inner thoughts and feelings like a sieve. But in most cases the other person is too polite to mention them.
In the film Mater argues that dents are not something to hide with embarrassment – rather they are something to take pride in as they represent where he has come from, who he is now and the person he plans to be in the future. His goal is not to be the plastic person as demanded by society, rather to be a person of principles who is prepared to present who he really is to the world and not offer a false façade to satisfy the hungry masses.
In the Lead Yourself book I argue that the development of plastic leadership programmes that supposedly offer short term fixes to long standing problems fail because the recipients of the change (the staff members) can still see the real inner person. The New Model Leaders exit the leadership course with a sense of miraculous self worth with all their faults airbrushed way. They have been convinced by the trainer that they are now wearing the new cloak of leadership (like the cloak of invisibly in Harry Potter). But unlike Harry’s cloak on their return to work the team members can see right through this façade and recognise all to well that the same airbrushed person is sitting in front of them.
A wonderful example of a leader who doesn’t seek airbrush out his dents is Richard Branson. He often explains how at school most academic things at school passed him by. One implication was that, right up until the age of 50 whilst running the largest private company in Europe, he still couldn’t grasp the difference between gross and net profit. It made board meetings quite bizarre. Eventually one of his directors drew him a picture – he drew an ocean showing a net with fish in it which we could take home, explaining that everything else, all the rest of the turnover, goes elsewhere.
For me the subtle message from Mater in Cars 2 is that before we can stop airbrushing our inner dents away we need to know what they are. In the film as well as knowing that the dents were there - Mater could describe just where each one came from.
Personal leadership is about having the courage to look inside and be honest about who we are as human beings and to accept the various dents and dings that we have picked up along the way. By recognising these supposed ‘failings’ – we can choose to embrace them and turn them into brand assets. Unique characteristics that enhance who we are and actually help make us distinct in a crowded market place.
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