Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet — thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing — consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust. — Lance Secretan
If you haven’t already, check out a brief overview of leadership styles here. Authentic leadership is a style of leadership that emphasizes the leader’s legitimacy and competence by building honest relationships with followers. Authentic leadership begins with deep self-awareness. It’s really a lifelong journey of learning from experiences which build upon one’s morals and values. Authentic leaders, not fearing judgment from others, share these experiences openly; stories of success and defeat, good times and rough times. The sharing of these stories reinforce genuineness and, subsequently, authenticity.
If you can understand who you truly are as a person, and as a leader, then you’ll be able to instill the same understanding in the team around you.
It is one thing to understand the self, it’s another to openly act on the self. Thus, the “authentic” bit doesn’t emerge until followers perceive the leader as genuine and authentic. Followers come to perceive their leader in this way when the leader’s behavior over time remains consistent with his or her morals and values. In short, to become an authentic leader one must
Strongly internalize morals and values
Let these morals and values drive behavior
Be transparent with personal strengths and weaknesses
Despite authentic leaders being genuine (or, original), they share many characteristics and behaviors. Typically, authentic leaders:
Are mission driven
Focus on the long-term
Communicate openly about strengths and weaknesses
Demonstrate behaviors which induce trust
Own their mistakes
Constantly grow and learn
Structure their teams and organizational systems around personal morals and values
Don’t have a separation of professional and personal life — their professional life is their personal life as it is how they express themselves
Authentic leadership holds making the most of our strengths, recognising and trading on our weaknesses and taking full self-accountability for the impact we have on others. — Steve Robinson
As the leader, [you] need to empower those around you to do their jobs, but it also means something else: you need to be able to take the hit and eat crap once in a while. Tweet me @ZarirMerwanji