Authentic Leadership

Why be Authentic?

Now, you may wonder as to why there was a need to emphasise the authenticity of a leader, especially in a competitive market and/or work environment? The simple answer is trust. Your employees, investors, colleagues and customers must believe that they can rely on you to achieve objectives, mandates and promises of the organisation. 

Authentic leaders build this trust on mutual understanding, instead of unfounded hope of possibilities. Hence, they achieve a certain alignment that links collaboration and commitment to this trust and not just terms of a contract. 

What is Authentic Leadership?

All organisations want to grow through continuous improvement in performance, prospects and stakeholder relations. Leaders are tasked to realize this growth, through various approaches to leadership. In recent years, authentic leadership has emerged as a forerunner among such approaches. The term was first popularized by the ex CEO of Medtronic, Bill George in the year 2003. He based it on the ancient Greek concept of “know thyself” and envisioned it as a style of leadership that is consistent with the core values and personality of the leader. Thereafter, experts of leadership studies incorporated psychological theories of self-awareness with management practices to arrive at certain verifiable touchstones or components of authentic leadership.

The 4 Key Components of Authentic Leadership:

1. Self-Awareness: A leader’s sense of self includes the awareness of motivations, core values, strengths and weaknesses. You can only be authentic if you have a thorough understanding of yourself as well as your influence and impact on others. Deviations between the ways you see yourself and the perception of your team, poses a huge threat to your ability to work under high pressure situations or sustain mutual trust. On the other hand, if you apply self-awareness to demonstrate your work ethic, you can shape the perceptions of your team and also establish new benchmarks of leading by example. 

The writings of Tara S. Wernsing's & Bruce J. Avolio, spell out three very useful tips to “know thyself” by:

a. Seeking feedback from the environment: You have to encourage co-workers and clients to share their honest opinions with you. Furthermore, you must also learn to observe their non- verbal cues, posturing and behavior as a feedback mechanism; for example, do they become excited and motivated in your presence or do they become indifferent or resentful of your presence.

b. Observe yourself and your feelings regularly: Studying the environment and observing yourself can be simultaneous activities. You can ascertain your physiological and emotional responses and identify external and internal triggers and indicators to your behavior; with constant practice, you will learn to accept your emotions and learn to manage them better.

c. Use self-reflection: Initially, you can ask yourself questions about your purpose, nature and values. To this end, you can access hundreds of free online questionnaires. Once you start to get a grip about your process of self-reflection, you can also seek help from psychotherapists for supervision, autoethnography, countertransference etc.  These methods may appear quite simple but it is best that you avail consultation before pursuing them.

2. Relational Transparency: While self-awareness can help refine your interactions with the people around you, it does not guarantee transparency. In fact, you have to identify it as a core value and the foundation of your relationships. Here are some tips that might help:

a. Become Unambiguous in your communication: If we presume that you are pursuing a flexible and interactive work environment that does not practice strict regimentation, then the best way to introduce transparency is to remove ambiguity in official communications, especially in tasks where you expect the receiver to show some initiative. Usually, a combination of templates, impromptu conversations, constructive feedback mechanisms and an open door policy works. 

b. Do not suppress information and feelings: Let your team know that you share as much information as possible and be proactive in constructive feedback that doesn’t sound devoid of feelings. If you express awareness towards their emotional state and share your feelings about their contribution, they will reciprocate the same. Herein, telling the team about risks and failures can be seen as an opportunity for improvement

3. Balanced Processing: Transparency can encourage alternate viewpoints, but it does not guarantee a consistent inflow of such a feedback from the team. You have to train your team to introduce counterviews as a necessary input for collaboration. This is only possible if the team can identify:

a. The biases and shortcomings of each member, including the leadership. These also include the tendency of team members to overlook each other’s lapses and failing to improve in a constructive way. Although this process is considered as an integral part of all types of leadership styles, authentic leadership distinguishes it by incorporating the practices of self-awareness and voluntary disclosures.

b. The gaps between each individual’s core values and those of the leadership and the organization. This helps prepare for stages of moral conflict and allow team members the opportunity to avoid or overcome such conflicts. It will equip you to manage the team better in various situations i.e. dealing with a colleague or co-worker who is more willing to sacrifice transparency for loyalty or vice-versa. 

c. Ways and means to encourage each other to share their functional inputs as well as personal opinions. Promoting a practice of active listening always helps and it also helps in gaining self-awareness.

4. Internalized Moral Perspective : Often, doing the right thing is about prioritizing interests and needs and the moral compass tends to put the needs of customers, company or team, ahead of the individual needs of the leader. The real challenge is to internalize the moral perspective across the team, instead of restricting it to a policy or protocol. Herein, only authentic leaders are equipped to achieve this internalization because:

a. Core values of the leadership have transcended across the team and stakeholders via self-awareness and transparency. If your people support you and understand your process of overcoming moral challenges, they feel your values to be their values.

b. Authenticity is validated by leading through example. You establish the points of reference for each and every other co-worker by realizing morally unquestionable acts. Thereafter, you must encourage them to follow your lead and practice the same criteria for moral evaluation. 

If you’re ready to consider a new way of leading to ensure the long-term survival of your business and the health and happiness of your people, then join our half-day workshop. (These are particularly beneficial to those returning to the workplace). If so, you can learn more and register here.

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