Chances are we’ve all had to work for someone who’s motives we questioned. Authentic leadership, although not fully developed, gives us key concepts to better understand the importance of trustworthy leaders. It is analyzed in terms of interpersonal, intrapersonal, and developmental perspectives. This emphasizes the value of the reciprocal relationship between leader and followers, the self awareness of a leader, and the idea that it’s a leadership styles that can be shaped over time.
The theoretical approach defines authentic leadership as a process comprised of four major components: Self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, relational transparency (Northouse, 2016). A leader who is self-aware truly knows themselves and what they represent. Internalized moral perspective refers to the ability to make decisions based on an individual’s moral compass rather than external pressure. Similarly, balanced processing accounts for behavior and decision making that is both unbiased and objective. Lastly, relational transparency is the ability to truthfully represent oneself to others.
There are three other factors that influence the aforementioned components of authentic leadership, which are positive psychological capacities, moral reasoning, and critical life events. The psychological capacities include hope, confidence, optimism, and resilience (Northouse, 2016). These capacities may be traits that are a part of a person’s personality, but may also be developed through training over time. If we think about the negative counterparts of these capacities, it’s easy to imagine how damaging that could be as it relates to leadership qualities. Moral reasoning is the ability to differentiate between right and wrong when making decisions that effect the entire group. It is critical for a leader to put personal differences aside in an effort to reach goal attainment. Leadership can also be molded by major life events. Regardless of whether these events are positive or negative, they have the ability to stimulate growth and allow leaders to be more authentic (Northouse, 2016).
The overarching concept of authentic leadership is for leader develop qualities that not only give followers a sense of trustworthiness, but also allow them to make decisions that best for the group as a whole. I thought that this was the type of leader that I worked for. She gives the impression that she has our best interest at heart, and it wasn’t until recently that I learned otherwise. After working closely with her and witnessing her reaction to my personal failures and successes, I realized that her motives were selfish and that her image was more important than the well being of the office as a whole.
In relation to the positive psychological capacities, I believe that she displays them all, which is why I was fooled for so long. However, light was shed on her limited ability as it relates to her moral reasoning. For the past four years I was entrusted with managing operations in our office. I was certainly doing more than the scope of duties outlines for my position. Although many would comment on how I was being taken advantage of, my perspective was that I was just doing my job to the best of my ability. As a government contractor, it’s generally a good idea to stay on your toes and keep an eye out for other opportunities, and my boss was aware that it was a short-term goal for transition into a government civilian role. I’ve seen many people that work under me move on to better opportunities, and while it was hard to see them go, I was always happy for them.
It is a sort of a messy situation since many of the positions most suitable for me are working for people that our office interacts with regularly. There was a position that opened up and the hiring manager basically said it was mine and instead of interviewing me, was pitching all the benefits and trying to convince me to take the job. My boss is a senior level government official, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she pulled the plug on the opportunity that would have made a huge impact on my well-being. Suddenly our relationship changed, and she would regularly make comments to me that seemed uncalled for. She told me that it was not my dream job, that the position was overvalued and undeserving of the rank it held, and the list goes on. This was a complete failure to regulate all four components of authentic leadership. If she was expressing her true self at that time, it certainly didn’t have positive effects. Interesting enough, a much younger and less experienced guy that worked for me ended up getting the position. He happened to be only person out of a group of experienced employees that she didn’t know what being considered to get the job.
As you can imagine, I lost trust in her. Shortly after this event, I started working at a new facility where I was a liaison for out our office. This was at the request of the Army general we support. That’s when it all became clear. It was still my job to keep my boss updated on various projects. Almost every phone call led to a guilt trip about how things are getting done and she has no one to rely on, however I offered to have other supports her day to day tasks. To a certain extent there was also jealousy that I was getting along with my new colleagues, which was the whole point of me working at the new facility, to bridge the communication gap between offices. Authentic leadership is rooted in leader behaviors that instill trust, and that element was certainly lost throughout this course of events.
As previously mentioned, critical life events influence the ability to become authentic leaders. It became abundantly clear that there were events in her life that her to become the type of leader that she is now. Not only was I not there to do all her dirty work (and in reality, a huge part of her own job), but she was comparing her career timeline to my own. There were several comments made about how the position I was passed over for is a rank that took her two masters degrees to qualify for. She’s also made several comments about my car and house, and trust me when I say that there’s nothing fancy about them. She happened to start a family very early in life, and I just have the opportunity to be financially selfish since I have no dependents. The most inappropriate comments minimized the death of my father by talking about the challenging relationship with her father. Her showing this side of herself, although it was probably out of anger, made me lose an enormous amount of respect for her. It was almost as if she was trying to live through me. She even went so far as to try to influence my personal life by asking a coworker to “try and talk some sense into me” by convincing me not to move back to Texas to be closer to family. Fortunately, I’ll be moving on to another opportunity soon.
While these were examples of my direct interaction with her, many of my co-workers starting experiencing the same types of interactions with her. While she had initially expressed the positive psychological capacities that are associated with authentic leadership, those too are starting to diminish. She now receives positive reinforcement from her staff when is comes to approaching new tasking and brainstorming.
So where do we go from here? As we’ve learned, the developmental perspective of this theory suggests that new behaviors can be trained or coached. How does that initiative happen when there is no one above her to push her to do it? In this case, feedback is critical. Her staff has no opportunity for change is the issues are not addressed, and she might be lacking the self-awareness to understand the scope of the issues.
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
djh5474 says
Working for a leader who displays the authentic leadership characteristics, to me, is a breath of fresh air. A leader who can stand on their principles that are in sync with the company’s future mission; provide purpose with passion; connect with the team and have a strong, respectful relationship; and values that align with self-discipline (Northouse, 2016) can be a very reward and trusting leader. When the leader bends their set of values or takes credit at the expensive of the team that is the leader falls from being authentic and the connection within the team dissipates.
Unfortunately, I too, have fallen victim to a leader that was not authentic in nature. My leader had the self-awareness to understand themselves by letting us hear their strengths and weakness to build trust and unity (Northouse, 2016). Even their relational transparency around the group was flawless by being open and honest to gain everyone’s trust and loyalty (Northouse, 2016). But when it came to internalized moral perspective and balanced processing, they feel well short of these characteristics by going to closed meetings with other team members and showing favoritism to some then telling higher leadership their ideas without recognizing the group.
Working in this type of environment can alter the team members and shy them from future interactions as cohesive team. Best traits that can really help bring the team back together when the leader is not truly authentic are the four key positive psychological attributes of confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience (Northouse, 2016). Building these attributes and working to bring the team back together can very trying, but well worth the investment especially for the long-term results and the leader may just find themselves growing into a better person.
Reference:
Northouse, Peter G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage Publications.