The route to authentic leadership

Based on an article by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, TJ, p. 31-34, Nov. 2006

To be yourself, you must know yourself and show

yourself

Self-knowledge and self-disclosure vital to effective leadership

Leadership

• Begins with you• Will not succeed unless you have some sense of who

you are

Followers

• Want to be led by a ‘real’ person, not a corporate apparatchik

• Will not be inspired, aroused, excited or motivated unless they know who you are,what you stand for, what you can and cannot do

Workplaces• Not easy for individuals to express themselves, without

fear of ridicule or failure• Inhibit individual authentic selves• Make it difficult to reconcile working lives with private

lives• An important element in the work/life balance• Even when self-expression is encouraged, individuals

may not respond – their experiences have damaged their capacity to both know and show themselves

Work/life Balance

• More than spending time at home• Means transforming workplaces into

arenas for the display of authenticity

To show people who you are requires a degree of self

knowledge (or at least self awareness) as well as self

disclosure

One without the other is hopeless

Introverted Managers

• May know themselves well but fail to communicate to others

• Followers are not mind-readers• Remain frustratingly enigmatic• Through choice and skill can overcome

their predilection for self disclosure

Managers without self knowledge

• Efforts at self-disclosure undermined• Communicate but, their self-image false• Others perceive them as phony or

unauthentic• Sincerity cannot be faked

To Be Yourself, You Must Know Yourself

And, Show Yourself

Self knowledge is never complete

Neither is self-disclosure

What works for you?

Effective Leaders

• Know enough and show enough to maximize impact

• Rarely have perfect insight – some too fixed on their overarching purpose to worry too much about themselves; others display narcissistic properties that distort their sense of self – we are only humans

Characteristics of effective leaders

• Have a sense of what works for them with others

• Does not necessarily require having a deep understanding of how and why it works

• Self-aware• Better able to learn how they are seen and how

they can actively shape others’ perception in the formation of their identity

Bill Gates

• The ultimate computer computer geek• Turn a pejorative stereotype and turn it into his

advantage• Knows the computer industry inside out• Skillfully use self-image

Ken Livingstone• Mayor of London• Dresses like a school teacher, speaks in a distinctive

nasal way, with a passion for news• Make a point of regularly using public transport• Changed London’s transportation system• Londoners identifies with him

Reality Testing

How do we know that leaders are real?

• Through human capacity to instinctively recognize behaviour that is not authentic

• When followers spot this, very hard for leaders to recover

Authentic leaders are not imitations

• By reading leadership recipe books, readers conclude that by mimicking what worked for others they can become great leaders

• The challenge is to become more knowing and more skilled at disclosing themselves

• Not trying to become someone else

There is a leader in the team

Effective Leaders

• Deploy their differences to serve both their own and their team’s interest

• Convey the reassuring message “If you fail, I will catch you”

• Has the strength to carry out the task, but will also step aside and let followers to develop their strengths

‘Quite Leadership’

• Able to impose and communicate leadership assets in low-key understated way

• Modest individualism achieve great things• All of us have ‘a giant within’

Listening to learn

Effective Leadership

• Develop self-awareness by pursuing a clear and simple strategy: try things out and get feedback

• Rely heavily on experience and experimentation• Engage in reflection but rarely arrive at their

leadership capability through theory• Ironic that business schools focus on abstract

conceptualization with little reflection and observation

Authentic leaders

• Prepared to go beyond their comfort zones• “Grounded” individuals – clear sense of

who they are and where they come from• Comfortable with their origins – family,

class, gender, ethnicity, social status, religion or geography and understand how they shape them

Culture Differences

• Determine how individuals conceive of their origins

• US – locale a powerful source of identity• Europe – class and status• Asia – family

Leaders

• Conceive of their origins through multiple lenses, where all the variables operate in a kind of palimpsest – one factor layered on top of another

• Subject of multiple determination

Where and how

Effective Leaders

• Articulate the relationship between where they come from and who they are

• Comfortable with their origins• Combine self-awareness with the ability to

self disclose• At ease with mobility – adapt but retain

authenticity

Growing your own

Developing capacities of authentic leaders

• A list of pragmatic suggestions• Not all of this will work for everyone • Try to find techniques that can help you• If you cannot develop a refined awareness of

what works for you, your leadership abilities will be limited

Seek out new experiences and new contexts

• Can involve changes as small as seeking to lead outside your function or as large as seeking to lead in an entirely different context

Avoid comfort zones

• Develop self awareness through active experimentation

• Routines inhibit experimentation

Get honest feedback

• Seek out sources of straight feedback• Use 360 degree feedback• Coaching provides external perspectives• From honest colleagues, family and

friends

Explore Biography

• Effective leaders have a deep and intimate knowledge of the contexts which made them who they are

• Self-knowledge means coming to terms with the events which makes us what we are

Return to Roots

• Spend time with people who know you without the trapping of organizational powers

Find a third place

• After work and and family, • We all need a third place somewhere we can

make associations and develop a sense of self freed from the obligation of work and family roles

Knowing yourself, being yourself and disclosing yourself

Ingredients of an authentic leader,primarily a matter of self-

awareness