When I was thinking about authentic leadership and what I wanted to write about for this blog post, one word kept coming to my mind, and that was trust. We all want to surround ourselves with people we can trust, genuine friendships, relationships with spouse or significant other, as well as our relationships with co-workers and our peers. So, then, why would we want our leaders to be anything other than trustworthy? Authentic leadership requires genuine leaders that are able to see the big picture and truly want to accomplish a shared goal. They are visionaries, and most importantly, worthy of our trust. Our leaders should be people that we can trust that they will deliver on commitments they’ve made, but at the same time are able to admit their faults and recognize their own weaknesses (PSU WC L12).
I truly feel that in our society today, authentic leaders just aren’t as present as they once were. The people of the United States are losing hope in our government’s leaders, trust is just not there, and skepticism plagues many. But it isn’t too late for leaders to become authentic leaders. Bridges that were burned can be built back up with time and consistency in order to make good on promises or commitments made. People need to feel that they can genuinely trust their leaders. And this can be accomplished by developing skills like listening, communicating, acting in a way that you want those following you to act, and also sharing in your success with those around you that helped make it possible (PSU WC L12).
Thought this concept is not yet fully developed and its ideas have not yet been fully explained, I think that our society is craving more authentic leaders. Especially now with the current state of our government and economy. We need to be able to trust those who are supposed to have our best interest at heart.
Reference
Penn State World Campus (2013). PSYCH 485 Lesson 12: Authentic Leadership. Retrieved on April 5, 2013. <https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp13/psych485/003/content/05_lesson/04_top
Dominique,
You made a some great points when connecting the importance of trust to authentic leadership. I agree with you 100%, trust has been lacking in both the Government and the economy. We need more authentic leaders that are worthy of our trust in order to develop a functional relationship with both business people and politians again.
I actually made a similiar point about trust in relation to the economy in my discussion post for this lesson. I discussed how in recent times the negative actions of business people have established a huge distrust in all things economical. I related it back to the reading; one of the strengths of authentic leadership is its’ ability to calm the public’s growing concern about trustworthy leaders. (PSU, L.12, p.6) Effective authentic leaders can restore our trust.
However it is interesting to think about how authentic leaders need be in order to gain our trust. Meaning, how strong must they be? As you wrote, will the ability to listen, communicate, and lead by example be enough to change our minds? I feel like authentic leaders may be just as prevalent today than in the past, but they must require much more strength in order to be influential. This is a very interesting point to be made about the history of authentic leadership, and its’ recent popularity and development.
You wrote about how authentic leaders must act in ways that they want their followers to act. This relates to the distrust we have seen in recent days through the “image” portrayed by businesses. I found a scholarly article that is talks about the importance of developing a great image. (Article can be found at this link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/doi/10.1002/lia.1242/abstract) It discusses the importance of a strong and positive image in being an effective authentic leader. I believe this relates to your post; by enhancing one’s image one can positively influence the negative perceptions the public has about that image. I believe that business people and other leaders of signifhcance who have lost our trust need to fix their image first. This will increase the trust between a leader and follower and create more effective and influencial authentic leaders.
I enjoyed reading your blog! You made some great points, and I agree that trust is a huge factor in authentic leadership.
References:
Penn State World Campus (2013). PSYCH 485 Lesson 12: Authentic leadership. Retrieved on April 7, 2013.