I recently came across an article in HBR which declares that “Authenticity is the Gold Standard for leadership”. The article was penned for the 2015 January-February of HBR. It is 2017 and authenticity is relevantly every day of our work-life.
In our pursuit to succeed more and more of us are faking it and convincing themselves that it is okay to fake it till you make it. Too many are not true to one's own personality, spirit, or character or true to their experience in work-life. We have many lives and many roles we play in our life and to succeed we have adapted ourselves to various roles and have evolved and transformed ourselves through the experience we go through in our work-life.
There is a huge misconception in business that achieving business results over a sustained period is the ultimate mark of authentic leadership. A leader may drive business results consistently yet an yet be perceived as being not authentic. The litmus test of an authentic lead is in times of trouble and chaos and when it time to take hard decisions that affects all rank an file of the organisation the person leads. An authentic leader. In these moments, there are two options for a leader: to step forward authenticity or go back into safety mode and fake it.
Deborah Rowland in her blog: Change starts with a leader’s ability to look inward indicates the “the answer lies in fostering a different quality of leadership, one that combines both inner and outer skills, and one which starts with a leader’s ability to work on their inner game – their way of being. She further indicates that “The top leaders of change in our research were able to put all of these inner and outer skills together. And they were contrasted with the less successful leaders who possessed non-mindful, egocentric, and pace-setting behavior.”
Authentic leaders are those who work hard at developing self-awareness through persistent and often courageous self-exploration and make time to examine their experiences and to reflect on them and grow as individuals and as leaders who have an authentic, insightful and engaging style. One sure way to be authentic is to use formal and informal support networks that will helps us leaders to stay grounded and lead integrated lives.
I am part of an informal network comprising of Bob Dowbiggin, Mike Weiner, Michael Baker and myself who meet regularly and share experience and seek advice from each other to say grounded and lead integrated lives.
“Authenticity is not a license to be excessively focused on the self. It’s about being aligned with your character and values in order to lead effectively. That takes work.”- Brooke Vuckovic
The ongoing problems in business leadership in the past decades underscores the need for an new type of leader for the years leading to 2020: The Authentic Leader.We need authentic leaders from the various levels in business to shoulder the gold standard of authenticity as technology is changing the business and its environment where team structures are becoming fluid and response times even unclear. The workplace is where many of the established formalized structures of what is considered ‘work and the workplace’ will disappear and instead the imperative of necessity is defining ‘work and the workplace’.
The future of work of managing and leading; the work of setting priorities, making strategy, reviewing performance, divvying up work and allocating rewards is going to get distributed to the edges of the organization as social technologies such as crowd-sourcing, social graphs, micro-blogging, tagging, opinion markets, mash-ups, peer ratings, peer production, crowdfunding, social curation and other new socially-enabled technologies emerging almost daily move into the workplace and redefine work itself.
The way we work is also undergoing massive change, where mobility and digital sophistication becomes a key requirement in the workplace and redefining how organization works commercially and culturally to deliver genuine customer experience. The workplace is digitally being disrupted – “The fourth industrial revolution is creating prospects of a future that few fully comprehend, but the implications for the world of work are already taking shape”. There is no doubt that the relationship between technology and humanity is changing very fast and it is shaping the way we work as technologies that were “unthinkable only a few years ago,” are being made possible by artificial intelligence.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post that the last 10 years have been about building a world that is mobile-first, turning our phones into remote controls for our lives but in the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first.”
“It is very important for us leaders to be authentic as we transit into an era where machines and AI plays a greater role in our work-life and we are sprinting into unchartered territory of men and machines”.
Especially as the most disruptive phase of globalization is just beginning where people will not move more freely across borders, but because technologies will provide “a substitute for being there. A time is coming where disruptive technologies will drive change and its impact will be more sudden, more selective, more unpredictable and more uncontrollable. These changes will present opportunities for both rich and developing nations alike for unprecedented policy challenges in their efforts to maintain reliable growth and social cohesion.
The question that begs to be asked is do we have leaders in government that are authentic enough to guide us though this unprecedented policy challenges and do we have leaders in our business and workplace who are authentic to guide to the unprecedented changes that are coming to our work and workplaces?
A KellogsInsight article: Five Tips to Become an Authentic Leader indicates:
Becoming a leader does not require adopting a new persona; it means amplifying your true self with focus and discipline. The key is to be authentic—to draw from one’s own experiences, values, and strengths.
What is your own experience on being authentic, insightful and engaging? I would love to hear from you.