“True to one’s own personality, spirit or character” is one of the ways that Webster’s defines the word authentic. Placing the term in front of the word leadership has roots in the theory of transformational leadership, which ultimately spawned it to be researched independently as its own approach to help explain leadership overall (Northouse, 2016). Authentic Leadership focuses on whether a leader is “genuine or real” (Northouse, 2016 pg. 195) in their attempt to interact with followers, and can be simply explained as whether or not a leader is true to themselves and actually are who they claim to be.
There seems to be a societal craving for authentic leaders today and Northouse (2016) hypothesizes the drive of this to be terror attacks, corporate scandals and financial problems of major industries that create unease in the populous. These seem like reasonable explanations that I am sure are all factors of the equation that nets results of a public demand for more authentic leaders. I do feel, however, to ignore the feeling of despair that we experience due to our overwhelming access to information through the internet may be an oversight here. Take for instance the recent survey by Center for the Digital Future that found Americans are spending over 23 hours per week on the internet. That’s a lot of time and certainly has to have an impact on many facets of our lives, what we look for in leaders likely not being an exception. Regardless of the driving factors, people’s yearning for trustworthy leaders in a world filled with problems around every corner we have apparently all researched thoroughly on the internet is easily evident. It is the choices we are making in search of those authentic leaders that are somewhat troubling to me.
Let’s take for instance the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, (I know as soon as I type this I am fully stepping into the minefield that is currently the American political landscape) and analyze his rise to leadership in the context of a societal demand for more authentic leaders. Judged on the well documented problem he seems to have with telling the truth, it would seem hard to believe we ended up here, but in fact we have. In order to better understand how, a deeper dive into what authentic leadership actually is will be required.
Authentic leadership, theoretically speaking, is a process by which a leader’s positive psychological attributes and moral reasoning, coupled with their life experiences, come together to shape the four main components of authentic leaders, which are self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing and relational transparency (Northouse, 2016). Not only does it sound complex, it is complex. With this many components and factors making up the process that is authentic leadership, one could see how it could be possible for a leader to be perceived as authentic, when in fact they may not be.
The first factor that influences authentic leadership is positive psychological attributes and Northouse (2016) lists these as confidence, hope, optimism and resilience. Here is where President Trump excels in appearing authentic. No one has more confidence than him (read this in his voice and I think you will see what I mean). All jokes aside, it is hard to argue that he does not appear confident in his delivery of a message of hope for a segment of our society that has been left behind by technological advances and a global market where their unskilled labor has been greatly devalued. The campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” exudes the hope and optimism he appears to have for his supporters’ future, with a nod to the way it used to be for them economically in the “good old days”. This message was delivered with all the resiliency he promised to fight on behalf his supporters’ economic interests with, and in the end, was successful in convincing the populous that he was the authentic leader they so desperately desired.
Moral reasoning and critical life events are two other factors that come together to create the process that is authentic leadership. It is here where I feel the President’s authenticity starts to come into question. Moral reasoning is one’s ability to make tough ethical decisions, and whether it be his decision to not release his taxes publicly or his choice to not sell off his personal business interests , it could certainly be argued that here he seems to be lacking in what it takes to do more than just appear to be authentic leader. It seems to me that, were he making judgements that truly “served the greater good of the” (Northouse, 2016 pg. 205) nation, he would have demonstrated different ethical ideals here.
One could surmise that these lapses in ethical judgment are decisions that end up creating critical life events for the President when they receive so much media coverage. Critical life events are situations that one finds themselves in that end up being impactful to them in terms of shaping who they are (Northouse, 2016). If it is indeed the case that the person that President Trump becomes is in part made up by the unfavorable media coverage he receives, yet another factor that makes up an authentic leader could potentially be questionable here.
If, possibly, two out of the three factors that come together to lay the foundation for the process by which authentic leadership takes place leaves something to be desired, then where does the President stand when analyzing those earlier mentioned four components of an authentic leader? I leave that for you the reader to judge, but I have a hard time thinking of this President as self-aware, being guided by an internal moral perspective, and exercising balanced processing or relational transparency (Northouse, 2016). This is for some of the reasons mentioned earlier, as well as those too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that anyone who has a soon to be imprisoned lawyer pay off an adult film actress in exchange for her silence about an affair that occurred while their third wife was pregnant with their fifth child, might have some questionable morals and a problem with self-awareness in terms of the way that their actions impact others.
Northouse (2016) puts it best when he sums up authentic leadership as “a complex process that emphasizes the development of qualities that help leaders to be perceived as trustworthy and believable to their followers”. It is my estimation that Donald Trump has one of the key factors of an authentic leader, which are a certain set psychological capacities, one could event call them a set of traits, (confidence, hope, optimism and resilience) that were key to him being perceived as an authentic leader by his followers. Where I feel he is lacking as an authentic leader is in the process by which a person learns to develop those capacities, the ones that allowed them to be perceived as authentic in the first place, in a way so they can be applied for a greater good to help their followers (Northouse, 2016).
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. 7th Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE
rxb5512 says
An authentic approach is a way you could use to describe how Donald Trump is running his term as president, as in he is being unapologetically himself at all times. According to the PSU WC lesson commentary (2019), the intrapersonal perspective of authentic leadership is focused on the internal forces at work within a leader, such as self-regulation and self-awareness. Self-regulation is the ability to manage disruptive emotions and behaviors (Northouse, 2016). Have you seen the tantrums? Or any of the rage inspired tweets? The man has no means of regulating or filtering. But in a way isn’t that being true to one’s self?
As far as being self-aware, I believe that he is so self-aware it is the key to explaining his behaviors. He understands who he is and he feels inferior to those around him. The behavioral clue, is in the way is the way he presents himself as being the loudest most persistent speaker in the room, this is to mask his insecurities. I would instead describe Trump as a reactive narcissistic leader, one who lacks empathy and has an over-inflated sense of self-importance (Northouse, 2016). A reactive narcissistic leader feels they continually need to prove their supremacy, to combat the internal struggle of feeling inadequate (Northouse, 2016).
References-
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 485 Lesson 12: Authentic Leadership. Retrieved from https: / / courses.worldcampus. psu.edu/psych281sp1oxo3/ content/lessono2/printlesson.