Make it, Don't Fake it

Sabrina Horn: Yeah, that's a great place to start. You know, the notion of "fake it till you make it" implies that you can take shortcuts to achieve success and that you don't have to do all the hard work: that, somehow, you'll achieve success faster if you fake it. But the inherent problem with that is that, in the process of faking it, you'll ultimately be exposed for your fakery. The truth always comes out. It could be a day, a week, a year or more but, when you exaggerate the truth or distort the facts, people find out. "Fake it till you make it" is the worst business advice ever.

Rachel Salaman: So, you clearly don't agree with it. But, in your book, you do concede that science supports "faking it till you make it" up to a point. And you do lay out some of the psychology behind that in your book, don't you?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. That is very true. So, faking it has origins in cognitive behavioral therapy that date back to the 1920s, actually. There was a therapist named Alfred Adler and he came up with a technique called "acting as if." And this was to help patients who had an inferiority complex: perhaps they were not feeling very confident in themselves. And the concept is this: that you act as if you're confident. You practice the behaviors that you want to exude until they become habit and you assume them and you become them. It's a form of self-help, just like visualization techniques or dressing for success or power posing. There's nothing wrong with that.

The issue is that the term "faking it" has negative implications: that you ultimately cross the line when you do and say things that are at the expense of others for personal gain. And that's where the phrase – the meme – "fake it till you make it" took a turn for the worse: became sort of instructional business advice. It sort of took on a life of its own and, now, some people even tell me they feel like, if they don't fake it, they won't be successful. And, boy, that's a terrible recipe for leadership!

Rachel Salaman: In the book, you introduce the idea of a "fakeometer," which is a spectrum of faking something you just were talking about. And, on the one end, there's "acting as if" and on the other end, there's "fabricating the truth." So, when it comes to integrity, where's the red line for you and why?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. So, when I was writing the book, I was thinking about all the ways that people fake it. And I had to put it into buckets and so that's why I developed the fakeometer – or, as in the U.S., as we say, the "fake-o-meter."

And so, it does: it starts off on one end of the continuum with sort of this innocent, self-help techniques, like "acting as if" or even a little white lie. Like, if somebody says, "How are you?" and you've got a terrible headache or you didn't sleep well, you're still going to say, "Oh, yes, I'm fine!" It's not hurting anybody: it's just easier not to talk about the fact that you didn't sleep well.

You cross the line – as I said earlier – when you do and say things that are at the expense of others for personal gain. So, I'll give some examples.

If you are an entrepreneur and you need to raise venture capital and you're feeling, "Wow! These other competitors of mine: they have more than I do" – or you're under the gun – so you exaggerate the truth about what your product can really do, to those investors in your deck. Or say you're a sales person and you didn't make your number or you just want to show your boss how great you are, so you over-promise what your product can do, to win a customer deal.

The most common form of faking it professionally is lying on your résumé or in a job interview. And so, from there, it goes on to minimizing the truth if you've made a mistake. Or, what's really dangerous is a selective truth telling where you're telling the truth but leaving out certain facts, as was in the case of the Boeing Max aircraft disaster.

There are also what I call "ostrich lies" where you're sticking your head in the sand, essentially avoiding a problem, shoving it under the rug, delaying making a decision, because you're overwhelmed or you just don't know what to do.

And then, off on the right hand – like off the charts in the deep end – is just total, outright fraud and deception as would be in the case of Bernie Madoff and that whole Ponzi scheme disaster.

So, it's a very broad spectrum, but most of us kind of live in that area where we're exaggerating the truth because we don't feel that we have really what it takes to be successful on our own.

And the issue, once again, is that the truth always comes out. The investor will do his due diligence and discover your technology doesn't do as you said. The customer will use your product and will realize that it doesn't do what you said it would, and then they'll post about it on social media and you'll ruin your reputation. And the employer will do a reference check on you and they'll realize that you actually didn't go to Harvard Business School. So that's the problem with faking it: it's that the truth comes out and you'll set yourself back.

Rachel Salaman: How hard do you think people find it to really draw that line and stay on the right side of it?

Sabrina Horn: Well, that's really why I wrote the book, because, I think faking it has just become so normalized and baked into society and business. It feels like integrity has somehow become optional: like in a multiple-choice question. And integrity should never be optional. I think we need to push the reset button on how we conduct ourselves and be our best selves as human beings, as leaders, as whatever roles we play in life.

It's gotten too easy to fake it. We don't even think about it: it's like air. And so that's really the purpose of the book: is to help entrepreneurs and founders, executives – really any person, young or old who wants to assume a leadership position – to conduct themselves and remind themselves of what it means to be successful in the long term and do it the right way.

Rachel Salaman: So, in your view, integrity matters, no matter where you are in the hierarchy. Is that right?

Sabrina Horn: Absolutely. Like, integrity is always important. It's not optional for some people and a requirement for others. Whether you're a mom, a homemaker or a postal worker or a CEO or the receptionist, you can't build anything sustainable without a foundation of integrity or honesty.

But all that being said – to your point – as a leader, by definition, you lead by example and, therefore, you're much more under a microscope. So, if I'm exaggerating the truth and faking it in front of my employees, I'm giving permission for them to do the same thing. So, the stakes are higher if you don't lead with integrity, but that doesn't mean that… It's paramount for everyone.

You have to put your head down at night on the pillow and know that you did right by everyone and by yourself and led by example, regardless of who you are.

Rachel Salaman: There is a lot of talk about authenticity in leadership these days. And you use the term in the subtitle of your book: "Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success." Bearing in mind that people can be authentically judgmental and short tempered as much as authentically wise, what's the value of aiming for authenticity?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. It's interesting. Authenticity is like beauty: it's in the eye of the beholder. So, what I think is authentic, you may not. And what you may think is an example of excellent leadership, I may have an issue with. You have to decide for yourself what your core values are and who you are and what you stand for. And being authentic implies a commitment then – to those values. So, the value of aiming for authenticity is tied directly to the core values that you want to be beholden to. It is true that you could be authentically evil and that would be an oxymoron. But, in this case, "leading with authenticity for real business success" means being true to your core values of integrity and honesty and so forth.

Rachel Salaman: And, obviously, you've had a lot of experience of that. As I mentioned in the introduction, you founded and led a very successful public relations firm. And there are a lot of stories from your experience of doing that, in the book. What drove you to strike out on your own and follow that path?

Sabrina Horn: I guess my parents were both entrepreneurs. They're German immigrants and came to this country with about $50 between the two of them. And I think their survival instincts and entrepreneurial drive are what infused me with this notion that there is no free lunch in life and that you make your own luck, and that you have to try to control your own destiny, and that you just have to persevere and be persistent about that.

And so, with that in my DNA, when I was 29 years old, I thought, "Well, I know enough to be dangerous. I have four years of business experience." I'd had no leadership training, no management training, but I knew how to do public relations for tech companies. So, I thought, "I'll just give it a try!"

I thought it through very, very carefully and decided, even if I didn't make it, I would still be OK. So, there was a whole process that I went through in making that decision. But ultimately, it was this drive to see if I could be successful on my own terms and do something good that would help other companies make their mark in the industry.

Rachel Salaman: How much do you credit your own integrity for the success of your company?

Sabrina Horn: Well, I mean, I think there are many things that I credit to the success of my company, including the incredible employees that stayed with me and our ability to be really creative for our clients and win them and keep them and put their name up in lights. But I think, ultimately, integrity is like an uber value.

It's like creativity means nothing if you're not doing it with integrity. Being a good employer means nothing if you're not doing it with integrity. So, again, I think it's table stakes. You can't build a successful business for the long term – or a successful marriage, for that matter – if you're not grounded in some form of integrity or honesty. So, I suppose the answer to your question is that integrity is at the core of our success.

Rachel Salaman: Can you share a couple of key turning points when integrity made all the difference to you and your company?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. I'll give a couple of examples. One where I had to learn a hard lesson and take my own medicine and one where I think we made a bold move.

It was after the recession of 2008 and 9 and cash was really, really tight, and we needed to bring in the revenue. So, we had an opportunity to pitch a huge deal: it was a financial, fintech, software company and was like a half-a-million-dollar deal. And it involved everything: building a website, doing their branding, their identity, their public relations, their social media: all their strategy. And I promised them the world!

I said we had all the resources to do it. They said, "Can you get us in The Wall Street Journal?" And I said, "Sure, no problem – whatever!" because I had to bring home the bacon: I was under pressure and I wasn't scared but I was like, "I need this revenue." I faked it.

And we were "behind the eight ball" [that is, at a disadvantage] before we started. We made the VP of marketing who hired us look bad. We didn't have the capabilities to deliver what we said we could do and what we promised. I couldn't bring the resources on.

And so, we lost pieces of that business until we lost it all, along with a bit of our pride and, certainly, our reputation. And that was when I had to look myself in the mirror and say, "I set myself back. I was not grounded in our core values. I should have resisted that temptation."

The other example – which is an example I'm more proud of – is, also during that recession, when money was tight and every client's retainer mattered, we got a new CEO of an existing client – very, very smart woman – who came on board. But it turned out she was rather abusive to some of the folks on my team.

After several conversations, I thought, "This money isn't worth it, because my folks are really unhappy and there's no pleasing this client. And the money isn't worth the abuse, particularly in a tough business environment." So, I called her one day as she was going to the airport, and I fired her as a client and I told her she doesn't get to treat my people that way.

And so, I think that was a great example of staying true to our core values and what I lost in revenue, I gained in great employee morale and support and this energy that was really positive and helped us get through the rest of that period.

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Rachel Salaman: You say, in your book, that any book on leadership should consist, at minimum, of two parts: one on winning and the other on losing. I thought that was interesting. Why do you say that?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. There are so many books that are always written about winning and… ra-ra-ra, but there's very few books that really talk about how often a leader loses. And, to be a leader means you're going to be losing and more often than you would like. And how you rebound from a loss says everything about you as a leader.

I mean, there are many times when we didn't win that big pitch that we thought we were going to get and I went home at night feeling like a loser. But I had to get up the next day and act like a leader because all my employees and my clients expected that of me. So, I think it's really important to acknowledge the fact that you will lose, you will make mistakes and the humility with how you deal with that is essential.

I write about this in the book: that humility and admitting that you made a mistake and learning from the mistakes shows strength, not weakness. And how you rebound from that by doing things like talking with your team and doing a post-mortem and asking them, "What could I have done better? How could I help you guys next time so that we come off better in the next bid?" So, there's a whole chapter on that with different tips and techniques on that topic.

Rachel Salaman: There's a really useful section in your book on crisis management, based on some vivid real-life crises you had to manage. What are the most important things to keep real and free from faking if we find ourselves in crisis mode?

Sabrina Horn: The worst time to come up with a crisis plan is when you're in a crisis. And I suppose there's many things that I would advise but there are a few guiding principles.

The first is to always try and have a crisis plan or a contingency plan for the unimaginable, in your back pocket. And nothing that you plan ahead will actually be how a real crisis unfolds but at least you'll have a template and a straw man from which you can proceed.

In a crisis, it's essential to only tell the truth as you know it and nothing but the truth: you cannot provide false hope and you cannot predict because, then people will be holding you to that and you don't want to disappoint them even further. In a crisis, there's always a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt and so it's essential for a leader to provide a status of the situation and what are the next steps to provide a path to the future.

And then I guess I would say, lastly, to over-communicate. In a crisis, people crave information, even if the status is the same. Like, if you're waiting… as a small example… if you're waiting for your flight and it's delayed, you don't really care what's wrong with the airplane or why it's late but you just want to know… get an update. And so, in a crisis, the situation is the same: leaders have to over-communicate, provide very frequent updates, stating the status of the situation and what is being done about it.

Rachel Salaman: You offer a framework for crisis planning in your book. What are the key features of this and how adaptable are they across organizations of different shapes and sizes?

Sabrina Horn: There are lots of different ways of doing crisis planning and they do vary for businesses across industries. And, of course, if you're a small company, versus a Fortune 100 company, there really are big differences.

But there are some essential table stakes, sort of foundational elements. And it looks like this: you identify the scenario – so, essentially, you imagine the unimaginable: like a pandemic, ha! – and describe it. And then you do a vulnerability assessment, which looks at how that scenario would, potentially, affect every aspect of your business, from service, to engineering, to leadership roles, to HR – you name it – the ripple effect of that crisis throughout your organization.

Third, you identify the communications protocol: so who are the five people that need to be notified in case of such a crisis, and who is going to be your spokesperson about it? And then, fourthly, it would be then the individual… the plan: what would you actually do if this occurred? What things would you put in place? What would you activate?

And it makes you think about things that you can do now to be prepared for that so you don't have to create something while you're in the crisis: you've already kind of thought it through ahead of time.

And the very last piece is a Q&A. And this means, OK, so if the crisis is X, Y, Z, what sorts of questions will you have to address from employees, from shareholders, from customers, and thinking that through in advance.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned the pandemic there. When COVID-19 hit, you were, actually, no longer CEO of your company. But did that crisis teach you anything new about crisis planning and management?

Sabrina Horn: Yes, it did. I was no longer CEO of my own business but I have been doing consulting for other CEOs as an advisor. And what struck me is really this notion of doing contingency planning on steroids. Like, it's not enough to have one plan in your back pocket. In this period of time, where things changed from day to day or from week to week, you have to have multiple plans in your back pocket and different "What if?" scenarios so that, if A, B or C happens, you have a plan for them or some version of that.

You're constantly revising those plans in real time, sometimes at the end of every day, depending upon the situation. So, exercising that muscle is something that I've seen a lot of CEOs do now. And the interesting thing about it was that it was all short-term contingency planning. It was like, "How do we just get to next week?!" And, now, as we unravel from all this, we can do contingency planning on a little bit more of a mid-term to a longer-term basis. But that was an interesting thing I observed.

Rachel Salaman: If we focus on interpersonal communication now. You make the point in your book that you cannot control people, you cannot fix people, you say. How does that insight influence your own conversations at work?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. I mean, it kind of makes things easier, because you just realize that you accept people for who they are, whether it's someone that you manage or your personal relationships.

People are who they are: you can challenge them; you can try and stretch them; you can ask them what they would like to achieve and help them do that and nurture them, help them find their talents. But everybody is their own person and so you have to identify the unique strengths and understand what the unique weaknesses are of those people and then work with them, knowing that. And it, actually, makes things a lot easier because you can then complement those people with other people, knowing what you know about them.

Rachel Salaman: How can integrity lead to good results in the more difficult conversations at work? For example, if you need to discuss performance issues or even fire someone.

Sabrina Horn: Yeah. So, this is why leading with integrity and authenticity is so hard and why it's easier to fake it. It's easier to sugar-coat some information because it's hard to have those hard conversations. You're not doing yourself or the other person any good by sugar-coating the truth.

As a leader, you have to face the reality of things and you have to say, "Look, this is going to be a tough conversation and I need to share this with you and have a conversation with you about this." But the key to doing it well is to do it with authenticity and to develop a track record of being that kind of a person. It's predicated on your behavior prior to that and being reasonable, leaving people with their dignity intact.

But you have to establish a reputation for yourself of being fair and of being a person that's not going to punish you or destroy you. A leader shouldn't be feared: a leader should be respected.

Rachel Salaman: A few times in your book you stress the power of three magic words: tell, me, more. As a communications expert, when is this phrase especially useful and how does it reflect integrity?

Sabrina Horn: Yes. So, "Tell me more… "

I can tell you, there were times when I was unsure of a certain situation and I didn't have enough information. Say, you walk into a meeting, blind. "Hey, Sabrina! Come in and shake this CEO's hand and join our meeting!" I haven't had five seconds to look up on the internet what they do. And so, I walk in and I shake the man's hand – or the woman's hand – and I say, "How's business?" and then they start talking and I say, "Well, that's interesting. Tell me more about that." And that's how you can begin to form the foundation for a conversation.

The other time I've used it is when I have, personally, experienced impostor syndrome when I'm unsure of myself. I'm in a meeting and everybody's expecting so much of me and I feel that I'm not the person that they think I am. So, I just start asking questions: "Tell me more. What does that mean? Oh, that's interesting. Can you share more with me about that?" I find that it's a technique that really helps to break the impostor syndrome: that horrible feeling that you're a fraud or that you'll be exposed – to just sort of ask questions.

And then, lastly, when you're being attacked. So, say you have a very angry customer or you're in a situation where someone's venting: you can disarm a person and level the playing field by saying, "I'm so sorry to hear that. Tell me more." If you resist when a person is coming at you, they'll just keep coming at you. But, if you say, "I really hear how upset you are. Tell me where this is coming from. Tell me more." So, there's different variations of those three words but those are the three words that imply breaking things down, finding more information, and disarming a certain difficult situation.

Rachel Salaman: So, naturally, a lot of your tips will resonate, particularly, with senior executives and founders – as you are one yourself – but what one or two takeaways would you like to highlight for professionals at all levels of an organization?

Sabrina Horn: I guess I would just say to everybody, like, "You don't need to fake it because you have everything that it takes to make it and be successful. In fact, if you fake it, you won't make it: you'll fail because the truth will come out and you'll be exposed ."

I guess I would say, also, "Look, if the journey is supposed to be the reward, then make it a good one. Put yourself in a position where you can look back and be proud of what you achieved earnestly and honestly."

And then, as a sort of to-do, I would say, "Think about the last time you faked it. How did you feel? And why did you fake it? What compelled you to feel like you had to fake it?" and then, "What happened? Were you exposed? How did you feel about it? And if you could have a do over, how would you have done things differently? How would you have disarmed the fear, if you were afraid, or organized your risk, or gotten more information somehow to be more competitive? How would you have done it differently?"

So, I think that would be the takeaways I would suggest – for anybody.

Rachel Salaman: Sabrina Horn, thanks very much for joining me today.

Sabrina Horn: Thank you, Rachel. I love talking with you. Thanks so much for having me on.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Sabrina's book again is, "Make it, Don't Fake it: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.