Congruity is a quality of agreement and appropriateness. Where there’s congruity, things fit together in a way that makes sense. In terms of our leadership, congruity is being the same person or leader in every situation.

Leaders who lack congruity believe that they need to lead differently in various contexts of their life. For example, a person might believe that in the work context he/she must be the hard-charging, driven, command-control boss that gives out orders and expects them to be followed quickly and without question. When they are at home, they might be a caring and compassionate leader showing high empathy. And when they are in a leadership role in their church or community, they might be something different yet, perhaps the deep thinker seeking to weigh everyone’s input and building consensus. Sometimes we see a lack of congruity between when someone is leading up in the organization’s hierarchy as opposed to when they are leading down in the hierachy.

A character trait closely related to congruity is integrity. Especially thinking here of the broader definition of integrity, which is the quality or state of being complete or undivided. Integrity carries the concept of consistency of actions, values, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In other words, integrity means we act or behave in a way that is consistent with our values and principles.

When a leader lacks congruity, behaving in a different way in different contexts, there are problems. First, there is a lack of integrity. Our values are deeply embedded, and we can only have one set of values in which we truly believe. Therefore, the different ways that we show up cannot be consistent with one set of values. To operate without integrity, causes an inner conflict as our values subconsciously question our actions. Additionally, in an effort to maintain different leadership personas, they will naturally blend into each other. The people who we are trying to lead, when they get glimpses of the alternate leadership personas or a gap between our values and actions, will be unsure of who we really are and what we actually believe. Therefore, the relationship of influence is weakened.

To build and maintain congruity requires that we, as leaders, first clearly know our values. Secondly, we need to be confident in our ability to lead from our values. Then we need to transition from any inauthentic leadership styles to our true leadership. This process may cause us to re-examine our values or it may cause us to re-assess the various contexts in which we lead. If we believe that they require a different style of leadership than our true leadership, perhaps we don’t belong in those situations.

Practicing congruity in our leadership brings energy and peace to our lives. And we are most effective in our true leadership. Congruity and integrity are key building blocks of effective leadership.

Do you have congruity across your various leadership roles?