Faux Leadership: The Performance of Leadership vs. The Practice of It

Introducing Faux Leadership

 

Have you ever encountered a situation or a leader where you doubted if they had either the character or the competence to do the job? Did you hear more jargon than content and see more performing than genuine care? Unfortunately, we have a lot of these leaders out in the world, so after decades of studying and reflecting, I've decided to name this leadership style "faux leadership" because the only way to solve a problem is to name it.

The concept of Faux Leadership™ stems from almost three decades of curiosity, study, practice, and teaching leadership across industries.  When I embarked on my studies of leadership as a cadet in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps while attending college, I also started my observations of leadership.  These observations, while subjective and personal, began to form beliefs about the strength of character, values, and congruence needed to lead through complexity and crisis.  As my studies transitioned from learning to deeper research during and since my doctoral program, the roots of the concept of faux leadership™ began to grow.  They grew by watching leaders, practicing leadership, and reading about the results of leadership through and following the global COVID-19 pandemic. 

When organizations need leaders who have the depth of competence and depth of connection to solve complex, possibly unsolvable problems, faux leaders cannot lead through these challenges. 

Instead, faux leaders are focused on performing leadership, mimicking care, and pretending they have expertise and knowledge by using jargon and buzzwords, or possibly hiring someone to tell them what to do.  With the rise of AI in the workplace, faux leaders may also diminish overall competence by becoming overly reliant on AI to provide answers and make decisions. 

Organizational Impact

Unfortunately, these practices and tendencies of faux leaders have real implications for organizations.  They lead to short-term thinking because lack of competence often shows up in the inability to think for a system or consider long-term impacts.  They lead to disengaged employees and distrusting colleagues, as humans can often uncover a lack of genuineness.  This concept comes from knowing that people and organizations need leaders who are willing to do their own work; to embrace learning and growth as a lifelong endeavor; and to commit to building the connections and relationships that unlock the creativity and innovation needed to move through complex problems to unexpected but needed solutions.   

Definitions

Faux Leadership™:  behaviors that imitate or mimic leadership but willingly lack the depth of expertise, competence, and connection; these choices and behaviors result in shallow or surface leadership that may look impressive but eventually erode trust and performance.  

Genuine Leadership: the consistent practices of leading with congruence, competence, connection, and integrity.  Genuine leadership is when a leader’s actions, intentions, and impact align, resulting in the skills and abilities to lead through uncertainty and complexity.

Faux leadership isn’t a personality defect; it’s a leadership pattern shaped by context, incentives, and unintentional (or sometimes intentional) choices. It emerges when individuals adopt the outward signals of leadership, such as confidence, decisiveness, and visibility, without cultivating the inner capacities of competence and leadership practices that sustain trust, adaptability, and accountability. Often reinforced by organizational cultures that reward performance over substance, faux leadership thrives in environments where reflection is scarce and metrics favor optics. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward building a leadership culture rooted in integrity, intentionality, and impact.

Next Topic

But what if our leadership development programs are part of the problem? In the next post, I'll explore how well-meaning development efforts, when misaligned with values or overly focused on collecting content, can inadvertently produce faux leaders. I'll unpack how to design programs that foster real growth, not just polished personas.

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