Authentic leadership is a management style where individuals act genuinely and sincerely, staying true to themselves. Advocates believe that this type of leader is most effective in inspiring trust, loyalty, and strong employee performance. To pursue a leadership role, it’s helpful to gain more knowledge about authentic leadership and the qualities required. The following will also be discussed.
- What is an Authentic Leadership?
- The important of Authentic leadership
- Ways of Being a more Authentic Leader
- Characteristics of Authentic Leaders
- Principle of an Authentic Leader
- Challenges of an Authentic Leaders
- How to be an Authentic Leader
Well, let’s Dive Right In!
Contents
What is An Authentic Leadership?
Authentic leadership is a management style focused on transparent behavior to build relationships, achieve company goals, and inspire teams. Proponents believe that this type of leader can inspire trust, loyalty, and strong performance from employees.
The Important of Authentic leadership
Authentic leadership promotes open communication within a team and has wide-reaching benefits for the entire company. It increases employee morale, boosts productivity, strengthens trust, and improves the work environment.
Read More: The Principles of an Adaptive Leadership
Ways of Being a more Authentic Leader
The following listed below shows the five ways of an authentic leader:
- Self-awareness.
- Work on being a more effective communicator.
- Take action, but get support.
- Assess and evaluate.
- Rethink “leadership image.”
Self-awareness.
Authentic leaders assess their own weaknesses, strengths, and values to be more authentic with team members. Practicing self-awareness may also include self-reflection, asking for feedback, and awareness of employees’ feelings. Self-awareness demonstrates to employees that their leader can consider their own perspective while taking into account others.
Effective Communication
Leaders should focus on effective communication to build trust and demonstrate authenticity. They can achieve this by telling engaging stories, mastering their message with clarity and balance, leveraging leadership networking, using vocal variety, focusing on inclusive language, smiling, and considering their visual impact.
Take action, but get support.
To make real change in your life, start with small steps and gradually align your behaviors with your values. Genuine change is rarely sudden or dramatic. For leaders, significant change may be viewed suspiciously. Sustainable change requires daily commitment and involvement of trusted colleagues and friends for authenticity and support.
Assess and evaluate.
After identifying your values, preferences, dislikes, and weaknesses, assess how your actions align with your values and ethics. Clarify what is most important to you now and what you are willing and unwilling to do to achieve it. Keep in mind that there are no “correct” compromises, and your decisions may change over time. Set goals that are in line with your values.
Rethink “leadership image.”
Creating a leadership image requires a sincere desire to learn and change. It’s important to consider the space between the image others have of you and the one you want to project. A strong need to maintain a certain image can hinder authenticity. It’s better to reveal your identity and humanness for effective leadership. Gain awareness of your present image and leadership brand before making any changes.
Read More: Effective Communication strategies for leaders
Characteristics of Authentic Leaders
Authentic leaders have major characteristics that define their managing style. While not every authentic leader has the same traits, there are many that authentic leaders have in common. Some of these characteristics include:
- Commitment to personal growth.
- Dedication to professional development.
- Self-awareness.
- Emotional intelligence.
- Discipline in the workplace.
- Action that inspire others.
- Acute focus on long-term goals.
Principle of an Authentic Leader
Proponents of authentic leadership, including George, a listed number central assign that define an authentic leader. Those attributes include typical soft skills such as being genuine, accountability and compassion. Authentic leaders also don’t believe their professional self is different from their unique or one’s own self. Instead, they are also self-aware their strengths and weaknesses.
Read more: Role of Emotional intelligence in leadership
Challenges of an Authentic Leaders
Leaders with manageable skills have pushed back on the promotion of authentic leadership and the value they believe it brings to the work environment.
Backbiter claims that authentic leadership can promote rigidity in individuals who think that being genuine excuses them from evolving their ideas following new challenges, experiences, and insights.
Authentic leader belief in presenting one’s true self, and not a person, can prevent someone from being an effective leader.
How to be an Authentic Leader
Being authentic leader means having an alignment health between internal values and beliefs and external behavior. It comes from finding your own style of leading and making life decisions that reflect your ethics, values, and personality.
Final Thought
Your image can be either an asset or a liability for you as a leader. Consider finding a mentor with experience in your profession so they can provide specific advice for your career path. Some have also said authentic leadership’s belief in presenting one’s true self, and not a persona, can prevent someone from being an effective leader.
That is all for this article, where Authentic Leadership has been discussed. hope it was helpful, if so, kindly share with others. Thanks for reading.
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