Authentic leadership emphasizes self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and moral leadership. Authentic leaders promote self-awareness, ethical decision-making, and genuine relationships for effective and principled leadership.
Knowing One’s Values, Strengths, and Limitations: Authentic leaders possess a deep understanding of their core values, recognizing their strengths and acknowledging their limitations.
Being Genuine, Transparent, and True to Oneself: Authentic leaders remain true to themselves, maintaining transparency and authenticity in their actions and interactions.
Continuously Seeking Personal Growth and Self-Improvement: They are committed to personal growth and self-improvement, striving to enhance their leadership capabilities continually.
Aligning Actions and Behaviors with Personal Values: Authentic leaders ensure that their actions and behaviors align with their deeply held personal values, promoting consistency and integrity.
Examples:
Nelson Mandela: The former President of South Africa displayed unwavering self-awareness and commitment to his values, even during his long imprisonment.
Oprah Winfrey: Oprah is known for her authenticity and openness about her own life challenges, inspiring others through her self-awareness and growth.
Relational Transparency
Building Trust Through Open and Honest Relationships: Authentic leaders establish trust by fostering open and honest relationships with team members, colleagues, and stakeholders.
Encouraging Open and Transparent Communication: They create an environment where open communication is encouraged, allowing team members to express themselves freely.
Actively Listening and Empathizing with Others: Authentic leaders actively listen to others, seeking to understand their perspectives and demonstrating empathy.
Respecting and Valuing Others’ Perspectives and Contributions: They respect and value the diverse perspectives and contributions of team members, recognizing the importance of every individual’s voice.
Examples:
Abraham Lincoln: The 16th President of the United States was known for his ability to build trust and rapport through open and honest communication.
Brene Brown: A renowned author and speaker, Brene Brown emphasizes the power of vulnerability and open communication in building meaningful relationships.
Balanced Processing
Considering Diverse Perspectives in Decision-Making: Authentic leaders consider a range of diverse perspectives when making decisions, avoiding narrow viewpoints.
Including and Valuing Diverse Viewpoints in Decision-Making: They ensure that diverse viewpoints are not only considered but also valued and respected in the decision-making process.
Applying Critical Thinking and Reflective Analysis: Authentic leaders apply critical thinking and reflective analysis to make well-informed decisions that align with ethical principles.
Making Decisions Based on Ethical Principles: Ethical considerations are central to their decision-making process, with a commitment to making choices that align with moral values.
Examples:
Mahatma Gandhi: Gandhi’s leadership was marked by his inclusive approach, valuing the diverse perspectives of individuals from various backgrounds in the struggle for India’s independence.
Angela Merkel: Merkel’s leadership in Europe involved considering diverse viewpoints and negotiating complex decisions during her tenure as the Chancellor of Germany.
Moral Leadership
Acting with Integrity and Ethical Conduct: Authentic leaders consistently demonstrate integrity and ethical conduct in their actions and decisions.
Demonstrating Ethical Behavior and Accountability: They hold themselves accountable for their actions and behavior, setting a high standard of ethical behavior for others to follow.
Influencing Others in a Morally Responsible Manner: Authentic leaders use their influence to encourage and promote morally responsible behavior among their teams and organizations.
Promoting Social Responsibility and Community Engagement: They actively engage in social responsibility initiatives, contributing to the well-being of society and the broader community.
Examples:
Martin Luther King Jr.: The civil rights leader exemplified moral leadership through his commitment to nonviolent activism and his advocacy for equality and justice.
Melinda Gates: Melinda Gates, through her philanthropic work, embodies moral leadership by addressing global health and education challenges with integrity and accountability.
Key Highlights
Authentic leadership is rooted in self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and moral leadership.
Self-awareness involves knowing one’s values, strengths, limitations, and aligning actions with personal values.
Relational transparency emphasizes trust-building, open communication, active listening, and respect for diverse perspectives.
Balanced processing involves considering diverse viewpoints, applying critical thinking, and making ethical decisions.
Moral leadership entails acting with integrity, promoting ethical behavior, influencing morally responsible conduct, and engaging in social responsibility and community engagement.
Related Concepts
Description
Implications
Authentic Leadership
– Leadership approach focused on genuine, transparent, and self-aware leadership style. – Involves being true to oneself, demonstrating integrity, and aligning actions with values. – Authentic leaders prioritize building trust, fostering meaningful relationships, and empowering others. – Emphasizes openness, vulnerability, and ethical decision-making.
– Building trust and credibility: Authentic leadership builds trust and credibility by demonstrating integrity, consistency, and transparency in actions and communication, fostering a culture of trust, respect, and collaboration that enhances employee engagement, loyalty, and commitment over time. – Fostering meaningful relationships: Authentic leadership fosters meaningful relationships by connecting authentically with others, demonstrating empathy, and listening actively to their needs, concerns, and aspirations, fostering a culture of inclusion, belonging, and mutual respect that enhances teamwork, communication, and collaboration in pursuit of shared goals and objectives over time. – Empowering others and fostering growth: Authentic leadership empowers others by providing support, guidance, and opportunities for growth and development, and by recognizing and leveraging their strengths and contributions, fostering a culture of empowerment, ownership, and accountability that enables individuals to unleash their potential and achieve their goals and aspirations, driving organizational performance and impact in a rapidly changing and competitive business environment. – Embracing openness and vulnerability: Authentic leadership embraces openness and vulnerability by sharing experiences, perspectives, and challenges authentically, and by inviting feedback, learning, and growth, fostering a culture of honesty, resilience, and continuous improvement that enables individuals and teams to adapt, innovate, and succeed in a dynamic and uncertain world.
Servant Leadership
– Leadership approach that prioritizes serving the needs of others and enabling their growth and development. – Involves empathy, humility, and a focus on the well-being of others. – Servant leaders prioritize listening, empowerment, and removing barriers to success. – Emphasizes stewardship, community building, and ethical decision-making.
– Serving the needs of others: Servant leadership serves the needs of others by prioritizing their well-being, growth, and development over personal interests and ambitions, fostering a culture of care, compassion, and support that enhances employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention over time. – Empowering and enabling growth: Servant leadership empowers and enables the growth of others by providing resources, guidance, and opportunities for learning and development, and by removing barriers to success, fostering a culture of empowerment, ownership, and accountability that enables individuals to unleash their potential and achieve their goals and aspirations, driving organizational performance and impact in pursuit of shared goals and values over time. – Building community and collaboration: Servant leadership builds community and collaboration by fostering a sense of belonging, inclusion, and purpose among individuals and teams, and by creating environments that encourage connection, contribution, and collaboration, fostering a culture of teamwork, trust, and synergy that enhances communication, problem-solving, and decision-making in pursuit of organizational success and impact over time. – Practicing stewardship and ethical leadership: Servant leadership practices stewardship and ethical leadership by acting as custodians of organizational values, resources, and relationships, and by making decisions that consider the long-term interests of all stakeholders, fostering a culture of integrity, responsibility, and sustainability that builds trust, reputation, and resilience in the organization over time.
Transformational Leadership
– Leadership approach that inspires and motivates followers to achieve greater performance and growth. – Emphasizes vision, inspiration, and intellectual stimulation. – Encourages innovation, creativity, and individual development. – Can be charismatic and visionary, yet demanding and challenging.
– Vision and inspiration: Transformational leadership inspires and motivates employees by articulating a compelling vision for the future, challenging the status quo, and instilling a sense of purpose, meaning, and commitment to shared goals and values, fostering alignment, engagement, and resilience in pursuit of organizational success and impact. – Innovation and creativity: Transformational leaders encourage innovation, creativity, and individual development by empowering employees to take risks, explore new ideas, and unleash their potential to drive change, growth, and innovation, fostering a culture of experimentation, learning, and adaptation that fuels organizational agility, competitiveness, and relevance in dynamic and uncertain market environments. – Individualized consideration: Transformational leaders provide individualized consideration and support to employees’ needs, aspirations, and development goals, fostering trust, loyalty, and commitment by valuing and recognizing their contributions, strengths, and growth potential, cultivating a culture of collaboration, inclusion, and empowerment that enhances employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction, and drives organizational performance and success. – Continuous improvement and learning: Transformational leadership fosters a culture of continuous improvement, self-awareness, and learning that empowers individuals to adapt, grow, and evolve as leaders in response to changing business conditions, market dynamics, and leadership challenges, enabling the organization to innovate, compete, and thrive in a rapidly changing and interconnected world.
Ethical Leadership
– Leadership approach characterized by honesty, integrity, and fairness. – Involves making decisions based on ethical principles and moral values. – Ethical leaders prioritize doing what is right over personal gain or organizational interests. – Emphasizes accountability, transparency, and responsibility.
– Building trust and credibility: Ethical leadership builds trust and credibility by demonstrating honesty, integrity, and fairness in actions and decisions, fostering a culture of trust, respect, and accountability that enhances employee morale, commitment, and loyalty over time. – Fostering a culture of integrity: Ethical leadership fosters a culture of integrity by setting clear expectations, values, and standards of conduct, and by promoting ethical behavior and decision-making at all levels of the organization, fostering a culture of transparency, accountability, and responsibility that enhances organizational reputation, trust, and credibility in the marketplace over time. – Promoting fairness and justice: Ethical leadership promotes fairness and justice by treating all individuals with respect, dignity, and fairness, and by making decisions that consider the interests and well-being of all stakeholders, fostering a culture of inclusivity, diversity, and equity that enhances employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention over time. – Driving organizational excellence and impact: Ethical leadership drives organizational excellence and impact by aligning actions and decisions with ethical principles and values, and by promoting a culture of continuous improvement, innovation, and sustainability that enables the organization to achieve its mission and objectives with integrity and accountability, driving long-term success and impact in a rapidly changing and competitive business environment.
Leadership styles encompass the behavioral qualities of a leader. These qualities are commonly used to direct, motivate, or manage groups of people. Some of the most recognized leadership styles include Autocratic, Democratic, or Laissez-Faire leadership styles.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
Adaptive leadership is a model used by leaders to help individuals adapt to complex or rapidly changing environments. Adaptive leadership is defined by three core components (precious or expendable, experimentation and smart risks, disciplined assessment). Growth occurs when an organization discards ineffective ways of operating. Then, active leaders implement new initiatives and monitor their impact.
Authors and strategy experts Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne developed the idea of blue ocean leadership. In the same way that Kim and Mauborgne’s blue ocean strategy enables companies to create uncontested market space, blue ocean leadership allows companies to benefit from unrealized employee talent and potential.
Developed by business consultants Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey in the 1960s, delegative leadership is a leadership style where authority figures empower subordinates to exercise autonomy. For this reason, it is also called laissez-faire leadership. In some cases, this type of leadership can lead to increases in work quality and decision-making. In a few other cases, this type of leadership needs to be balanced out to prevent a lack of direction and cohesiveness of the team.
Distributed leadership is based on the premise that leadership responsibilities and accountability are shared by those with the relevant skills or expertise so that the shared responsibility and accountability of multiple individuals within a workplace, bulds up as a fluid and emergent property (not controlled or held by one individual). Distributed leadership is based on eight hallmarks, or principles: shared responsibility, shared power, synergy, leadership capacity, organizational learning, equitable and ethical climate, democratic and investigative culture, and macro-community engagement.
Ethical leaders adhere to certain values and beliefs irrespective of whether they are in the home or office. In essence, ethical leaders are motivated and guided by the inherent dignity and rights of other people.
Transformational leadership is a style of leadership that motivates, encourages, and inspires employees to contribute to company growth. Leadership expert James McGregor Burns first described the concept of transformational leadership in a 1978 book entitled Leadership. Although Burns’ research was focused on political leaders, the term is also applicable for businesses and organizational psychology.
Those who lead by example let their actions (and not their words) exemplify acceptable forms of behavior or conduct. In a manager-subordinate context, the intention of leading by example is for employees to emulate this behavior or conduct themselves.
A leader is someone within an organization who possesses the ability to influence and lead others by example. Leaders inspire, support, and encourage those beneath them and work continuously to achieve objectives. A boss is someone within an organization who gives direct orders to subordinates, tends to be autocratic, and prefers to be in control at all times.
Situational leadership is based on situational leadership theory. Developed by authors Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard in the late 1960s, the theory’s fundamental belief is that there is no single leadership style that is best for every situation. Situational leadership is based on the belief that no single leadership style is best. In other words, the best style depends on the situation at hand.
Succession planning is a process that involves the identification and development of future leaders across all levels within a company. In essence, succession planning is a way for businesses to prepare for the future. The process ensures that when a key employee decides to leave, the company has someone else in the pipeline to fill their position.
Fielder’s contingency model argues no style of leadership is superior to the rest evaluated against three measures of situational control, including leader-member relations, task structure, and leader power level. In Fiedler’s contingency model, task-oriented leaders perform best in highly favorable and unfavorable circumstances. Relationship-oriented leaders perform best in situations that are moderately favorable but can improve their position by using superior interpersonal skills.
In the context of an organization, cultural models are frameworks that define, shape, and influence corporate culture. Cultural models also provide some structure to a corporate culture that tends to be fluid and vulnerable to change. Once upon a time, most businesses utilized a hierarchical culture where various levels of management oversaw subordinates below them. Today, however, there exists a greater diversity in models as leaders realize the top-down approach is outdated in many industries and that success can be found elsewhere.
Action-centered leadership defines leadership in the context of three interlocking areas of responsibility and concern. This framework is used by leaders in the management of teams, groups, and organizations.
Developed in the 1960s and first published in 1973, action-centered leadership was revolutionary for its time because it believed leaders could learn the skills they needed to manage others effectively.
Adair believed that effective leadership was exemplified by three overlapping circles (responsibilities): achieve the task, build and maintain the team, and develop the individual.
High-performance coaches work with individuals in personal and professional contexts to enable them to reach their full potential. While these sorts of coaches are commonly associated with sports, it should be noted that the act of coaching is a specific type of behavior that is also useful in business and leadership.
When most people are asked to define power, they think about the power a leader possesses as a function of their responsibility for subordinates. Others may think that power comes from the title or position this individual holds.
Tipping Point Leadership is a low-cost means of achieving a strategic shift in an organization by focusing on extremes. Here, the extremes may refer to small groups of people, acts, and activities that exert a disproportionate influence over business performance.
The Vroom-Yetton decision model is a decision-making process based on situational leadership. According to this model, there are five decision-making styles guides group-based decision-making according to the situation at hand and the level of involvement of subordinates: Autocratic Type 1 (AI), Autocratic Type 2 (AII), Consultative Type 1 (CI), Consultative Type 2 (CII), Group-based Type 2 (GII).
Likert’s management systems were developed by American social psychologist Rensis Likert. Likert’s management systems are a series of leadership theories based on the study of various organizational dynamics and characteristics. Likert proposed four systems of management, which can also be thought of as leadership styles: Exploitative authoritative, Benevolent authoritative, Consultative, Participative.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
