How Authentic are you? 5 Ways to Step into more Authentic Leadership for more Equity in the Workplace

Authentic leadership is a leadership style that emphasizes the importance of being true to oneself and leading with honesty, transparency, and integrity. Ultimately how these leaders treat themselves and other people matters.

There is also plenty of evidence to support why Authentic Leadership is a sought-after leadership development skill by influential leaders and organisations globally. After all, Leadership is more than just a title that’s hired for. It’s a mix of skills that need to be continuously developed for personal and professional growth. For a win-win outcome.

A meta-analysis conducted by Wang, Sui, Liao, and Jia (2020) found that authentic leadership had a positive impact on employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance.

A study by Miao, Humphrey, and Qian (2019) found that authentic leadership was positively related to employee mental wellbeing and reduced stress.

Avolio and Gardner (2005) found that authentic leadership was positively related to organizational effectiveness. The study found that organizations with more authentic leaders were better able to adapt to changing environments, create a positive work culture, and achieve better overall performance that's more equitable. And arguably more sustainable.

So how do you really find ways to cut through the noise of a busy workplace and learn to be more true to yourself?

The critical starting point is Self Awareness. Authentic leaders have a deep understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs. They are honest with themselves about who they are, and they use this self-awareness to guide their leadership style. The result is an ability to better cultivate cultures where people feel heard and represented regardless of their differences.

Here are a few ways Authentic Leaders can pave the way.

1. Values

What are your core values and beliefs?  As a leader, you need to understand what is important to you and take time to reflect frequently on this.  It’s a skill in itself to find time to quieten the mind and reflect on how your values integrate with a bigger vision of what outcomes you want to create, when and how.

Authentic leaders are willing to make decisions based more on integrity rather than purely short-term gains because they are guided by their values and beliefs.

As we know in business things may not always be so clear cut, but successful authentic leaders tend to be better at emotionally regulating themselves when making decisions with more acceptance, less bias, and consideration for others at the same time.

Authentic leaders  will also naturally and commercially draw on and use  practices to integrate their core values and beliefs to develop a personal or/and organisational leadership philosophy to guide them through the ups and downs.

2. Vision and Purpose

Authentic Leaders find that their core values and beliefs can be aligned with a clear vision and purpose. Near term. Medium and longer term. They can clearly articulate what’s needed and when. They also have discipline to keep showing up for what they believe in, and in turn can inspire others along the journey with them.

3. Get better at focusing on your Strengths

And Weaknesses :-)

Authentic Leaders are guided by what they’re good at and learn to focus on areas where they can add more value, and they can embrace their weaknesses effectively too. They can let go of bias and judgment more easily and become comfortable with embracing failure as they grow and move forward in achieving their vision.  They learn to become good at this themselves which then allows them to better influence and inspire others.

4. Growth Mindset, Courage and Ownership

Growth Mindset, a term coined by Dr Carol Dweck looks at our ability as humans to embrace failure, learn new things, and grow. It requires us to become comfortable with overcoming failure through courage and self-compassion. Authentic Leaders can build trust by leading by example, leading through demonstrating enough vulnerability.

Importantly they know also how to take ownership of what they say they’ll do, when they say they’ll do it, but also in the face of failures. They’re more likely to share responsibility for mistakes.

5. Empathetic Leadership

Empathy is now one of the most sought-after Leadership skills in the workplace. Most people are not taught how to build relationships. And the most critical skill to building empathy is listening and responding. Authentic Leaders learn to master their ability to understand and manage complex relationships by connecting more emotionally and compassionately through curiosity and listening….whilst still being firm, focused, and data driven enough on achieving their mutual goals.

Authentic Leadership is the development of Self Leadership through Awareness and Emotional Intelligence.  Where honesty, transparency, and communication with integrity help to build trust and credibility with key stakeholders. Authentic Leadership approaches are behaviour driven and allow teams and organisations to look beyond the labels, perceptions and processes that may be holding them back.

Authentic Leaders are those who continually commit to their own learning in order to understand themselves as a person and how they and others see the world. it's authentic leaders who can drive innovative, authentic companies too.