What is authentic leadership?
Authentic leaders are self-aware, genuine, mission driven, focused on results, lead with their heart, and focus on the long-term (Kruse, 2013). These are just a few of the characteristics associated with authentic leadership.
Bill George is currently professor at Harvard Business School. He is also serves as director, on boards, as a trustee, serves as a board member on many different companies, organizations, and corporations. There are several other achievements he has gained throughout his leadership. Mr. George sees leadership as building your true strengths and not about being someone different (Wharton University, 2014). He has provided us with his five steps to being a successful authentic leadership, they are: discover your leadership in your life story, embrace your greatest crucible, practice your values and principles, and hone your leadership effectiveness (George, 2015).
Mr. George’s five steps closely relate to the Authentic Leadership Wheel and the six components associated with it. These components are meaning, mission, power, structure, resources and existence (PSU WC, PSYCH485, 2015).
Discover your leadership in your life story = meaning, existence
Using your life to help show what type of leader you want to be. Mr. George feels that in order to become authentic you need to understand your own story before you are able to have other understand you. Once you have been able to fully develop the story you should then share it. Being able to relate to people is key in leadership. Having the ability to take your life story, make it relatable to your role as a leader, and having followers be able to see how they can relate will help build a stronger relationship.
Embrace your greatest crucible = power
This is more about learning from your failures. However, failures can relate to you power. He relates this to losing a school election and how it affected his confidence. This would also affect the power he has over the student body. A key point he provides is that we need to change from approaching things from “I” to “We”. This shifts the feeling that it’s all about me to its all about us. This will increase the power one has to influence their followers successfully.
Practice your values and principles = mission, structure
Our values and principles help define us as individuals and help define our leadership styles. These values and principles also will aid us on our mission and developing structure. This goes with the idea of “walking the walk” and “practicing what you preach” concepts we hear throughout our life time. I never fully understood these statements until my own values and principles where put into question. We want to be a good role model for our followers and by doing this we have to be able to accurately represent our values. If we fail to do this then our followers will not have trust in our mission or support our structure.
Hone your leadership effectiveness = resources
Once you have been able to develop these other four steps the last one is picking your leadership style, work continuously to make your strengths stronger, and always look for feedback on how you are doing. This will require us to use all our resources to continue our growth as authentic leadership.
There are so many ways we can become authentic leaders, however we must know that it isn’t an instant process, will require a lot of work, and is a continuous learning experience. If you feel that your success or failure in leadership is important than the work and endless learning on how to be better will be worth it and your followers will appreciate you for taking the time to become the best you can be.
George, B. (2015). About Bill George. Retrieved from: http://www.billgeorge.org/page/about-bill-george
George, B. (2015). Harvard Life Hack: 5 Steps to Authentic Leadership with Bill George. Retrieved from: http://www.billgeorge.org/page/harvard-life-hack-5-steps-to-authentic-leadership-with-bill-george
Kruse, K. (2013) What Is Authentic Leadership? Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/
Wharton University of Pennsylvania. (2014). Bill George: Authentic Leadership and Letting Your Strengths ‘Bloom’. Retrieved form: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/authentic-leadership/
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2015). Psych485, Module 12: Authentic Leadership. Retrieved form: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych485/001/content/12_lesson/printlesson.html