Read Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback for Free Online

clip was replayed in the media, she went up in the polls and went on to win the New Hampshire primary.
    And lest you think I’m showing political bias with these examples, let’s also pick on the Republican candidate, John McCain. The man was known as a “maverick” who stood up for what he believed in, sometimes even offending his own party in the process. But when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate after it had been reported that he favored the independent senator Joe Lieberman, he lost some of his credibility. His attempts to convince Americans that she had been
his
choice and that he hadn’t been pressured into it by members of his party just didn’t ring true.
    The point is this: These politicians are incredibly accomplished people. Plus, they have top advisers to help them create an image that will appeal to the public, yet they still get tripped up when they try to be something they’re not. Being true to yourself is a daily challenge that’s hard for everyone, no matter what your job title is.
EXTRAORDINARY AUTHENTICITY
    People know and follow the real deal when they see it, those who walk through life on their own terms, who stay true to their beliefs, and who don’t back down. We can all name people like this, and there’s often a pretty broad consensus that such diverse figures as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Oprah Winfrey, Muhammad Ali, and Winston Churchill are (or were) all real deals, which goes to show that authenticity can be demonstrated in many different styles.
    I call this having “extraordinary authenticity,” which means having the ability to be yourself even in the toughest situations. This requires living with a paradox: To inspire as a leader, you need to know your stuff, but you also need to be able to admit when you don’t know stuff. You need to be both confident and vulnerable at the same time. I struggled with that paradox myself when, in 1996, at the age of forty-three, I was given the job of president of KFC.
    It was the first time I’d been the president of anything, and because it had been a career-long goal of mine to one day be in charge of running a business, I was excited to get started. I really wanted to be good at it, to have a positive impact on the brand and the people working with me, and I wanted to turn around what had been a business in decline and have some fun along the way. But like many people with the best of intentions, I learned the hard way what I wasn’t good at. For example, for the life of me, I have never been able to tell a scripted joke.
    Toward the end of my first year as president of KFC, I brought all of our company restaurant general managers, more than two thousand of them, to our headquarters in Louisville for a meeting. Business was improving, and I wanted to give us all a chance to celebrate the accomplishment and encourage everyone to continue in the right direction. As we were gearing up for the event, someone in my office came up with the idea of making a video to play on the bus ride from the hotel to our facilities, which would welcome the RGMs to Louisville and tell them what to expect in the days ahead.
    The video, with me as narrator, started out with a spoof of the DavidLetterman show, complete with an opening monologue and Letterman-style Top Ten List. When you see the video, you can tell I’m reading jokes off a teleprompter, and even though I wasn’t on the bus while it was playing, I’m certain that the only laughs I got were from the laugh track the tech guys included on the tape.
    I still cringe for that guy up there in the video when I watch it. He hardly seems like me at all. I’m not a formal guy, but I look so stiff. I’ve never been very good at reading off teleprompters, preferring good old-fashioned paper notes when I have to give a speech. The only part of the video that works is when I threw the script away and asked for some feathery chicken feet I knew we had in storage for special kid events. Then I