I recently helped put on a talk for the AeA Emerging Business Committee. It was entitled Authentic Leadership and it was presented by the leadership consultant Gordon Whitehead. His practice is Captus5 and he writes extensively on the subject of leadership.
Good leadership is what drives organizations. Leadership is first and foremost about people. More specifically, it's about influencing people to do the right things (with heavy doses of motivation and encouragement) and making them better (giving them opportunities to improve and coaching them). And, in a longer term way it's about creating an organizational culture that cultivates and rewards authentic leadership.
Authentic leadership is a particularly effective form of leadership because at its essence it fundamentally respects people. It embraces the connections within organizations, among them, and with communities at large.
Authentic leadership has four key principles:
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Be True to Self
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Be True to Others
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Build Trust
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Build Community
An authentic leader is deeply aware of self. This is not in an overly absorbed way, but rather in a way that understands one's own internal personal needs and drives. The ability to be aligned with the core of who one is and to make decisions based on one's internal value structure is essential to an authentic leader.
An authentic leader has empathy, understands the plight of followers. It is in understanding the motivations, the conditions and the pains of followers where leaders rise to benefit human causes and achieve great things.
An authentic leader builds trust. Trust engendered by consistency, fairness and propriety is one one level of trust. However a deeper, much more powerful level of trust is based on hope; this kind of trust binds a follower to the cause.
An authentic leader has a keen sense of community. Consistently solving problems within the context of the organization's history, or at least with history in mind, is important. Change is often the most difficult thing for the average working person to face. Change is what leaders are most often called upon to do. Change that is represented from the community perspective softens the blow and encourages participation.
So how do you develop authentic leaders within your organization? Here are some key principles and ideas:
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Take risks! Let your team face adversity and don't bail them out. Let them solve their own problems.
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Decentralize power and rotate assignments
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Start a reading program and engage the team in learning
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Analyze case studies as a team
The best leaders are the ones who focus on putting great people around them, and then work to make them even better. A large measure of humility is required to do this. In fact, of great leaders, humility is one of the most important attributes.