Real Leadership for Real People

If you live authentically, you are pretty much the same person at work as you are at home, with the odd adjustment for the corporate context. If you are not, you are living a lie. Eventually, this lie will progressively corrode you from within.

The pace of change, from compressed product lifecycles to instantaneous customer demands, makes authentic leadership less likely than ever. We seek loyalty but expect our people will look first to their own needs rather than those of our organizations. We seek teamwork but continue to evaluate and reward individual performance. We seek long-term visions but prefer results that barely move us away from the paradigm of daily survival behaviours.

Authentic leadership confronts these dilemmas. It recognizes that great leadership is a lifelong journey, forged in the crucibles of tough times.It is only great in the sense that it is a greatness framed and delivered with humility and humanity.

Lao Tzu had it right. A leader is best when people barely know that he (or she) exists. This does not preclude the need for tough decisions. Such decisions are, however, best made in a spirit of shared responsibility for results and shared accountability for outcomes.

Real leadership recognizes that we work together as equals. Your good day may be your colleague’s shocker, and their shocker may be your day of triumph. You may be so focused on achieving your goals that you barely acknowledge that your team member has a sick child at home and a car that won’t start. Your marriage may be unraveling while your colleagues want to work all-nighters to develop great ideas.  One way or another, we must build authentic leadership styles build on transcendent values, values that come with us us wherever we go.

Authentic leadership thrives on this complexity.  It does so because it reconciles paradoxes and opposites and the apparently irreconcilable.  Paradoxically, it creates strength in our leadership styles as we simultaneously recognise and come to terms with our weaknesses. It is thus a style of leadership that truly inspires.

Authentic leadership takes courage.  It requires that we teach ourselves and our people as adults.  It is thus the only leadership style that leaves a legacy.

This presentation uses examples from around the world to describe the nature of authentic leadership, as well as the challenges that may confront its development in today’s organisations.