Consistency is a leadership signal, not a personality trait
Years ago, the sports agent and writer Mark McCormack, in his book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School (1986) described meeting U.S. President Richard Nixon twice, in different settings. What struck him wasn’t anything Nixon said. It was that he said almost exactly the same thing both times. The same handful of sentences, delivered like a script pulled from a drawer marked “business leader” or “religious figure,” depending on who was in front of him.
McCormack’s point wasn’t really about Nixon. It was about a pattern he’d learned to watch for in anyone: people who have a stock version of themselves for each audience, and people who don’t.
I see this pattern in some executives I work with. The range of people a senior leader talks to in a single day is enormous: a board member in the morning, a graduate hire in the afternoon, a journalist an hour later. It would be easy to have a slightly different “version” for each. Most leaders do, to some extent, and a version of that is appropriate. No one wants a CEO who talks to the board the way they talk to a new intern. But there’s a difference between adjusting tone and abandoning yourself.
The tell, I’ve found, is usually in how much someone is performing versus how much they’re simply present. Behavioural researchers who study trust have a consistent finding: people don’t extend trust primarily based on what’s said, but on whether what’s said matches everything else: tone, timing, body language, the small unscripted moments before and after the formal exchange. Psychologists sometimes call this consonance. When a person’s words, expression and manner all point the same direction. Its absence is usually felt before it’s understood. Something seems “off,” even when nothing specific can be named.
This matters more, not less, the more senior someone becomes. Early in a career, most people extend the benefit of the doubt. Senior leaders are actively read. People decide how much weight to put on what they say, and form that judgement largely from unguarded moments rather than prepared remarks.
Two questions worth sitting with
The first is for yourself, if you’re in a leadership role: do you notice a real difference in who you are, not just tone, but underlying manner with direct reports, with your own boss, and with people entirely outside your organisation? A shift in register is normal and often necessary. A shift in authenticity is the thing worth catching.
The second is about the people around you. In your next few significant conversations, pay attention not just to what’s said, but to whether it holds together. Whether the words, the face, the voice and the posture are all telling the same story. Then notice your own reaction afterward. Unease that lingers after an otherwise pleasant conversation is often data, not paranoia.
The leaders I see read as trustworthy over the long run are rarely the most polished in the room. They’re the ones who are recognisably the same person across every version of the room they walk into.
