Authentic Leadership: A Continuous Journey
Authentic Leadership: A Continuous Journey
Founder of BE Complete Coaching & Consulting, LLC, Brooke is a positive mindset and leadership development expert, driven to empower others to activate their potential, continuously grow, and lead authentically. Brooke's practice is rooted in positive mindset neuroscience, strengths-based studies, and leading research methods. Her experience spans two decades and includes developing business strategies for leadership teams, leading talent discovery initiatives, implementing internship, emerging leader, and education programs, and uncovering operational efficiencies. Brooke is ACC-credentialed through the ICF, Executive and Life Coach-certified through MentorCoach, LLC, and boasts an Executive Leadership Certificate from Cornell University.
August 3rd, 2022
Watch the full webinar in the video above, or read the recap below.
Authentic leadership in its purest form is understanding yourself, but also understanding others and those you work with. Making connections and being transparent with others can have incredible benefits to your working environment.
What is Authentic Leadership?
Authentic leadership is for leaders who are looking to grow and make an impact. In a definition, it’s easy to focus on the things that authentic leadership is not, and we can quickly think of stories and experiences of leaders lying, manipulating, and obscuring their intentions. True authentic leaders are complicated and contrived. “Contrived” may seem like an unexpected word to describe these leaders, but it’s meant to be an effort to be more managed and practice authenticity.
Authentic leadership is not just about being true to yourself, but bearing in mind what others see in you and what you see in them. It’s in its adolescence of meaning, and more research is being done on this philosophy. However, it’s vital to talk about authentic leadership, since we are in changing and challenging times. We must restore confidence, hope, and resiliency in the workforce as workers search for meaning and purpose. Authentic leadership is not a destination, but a continuous journey.
Elements of Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership takes a blend of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Self-awareness requires being deeply aware of how you think and behave, as well as how you’re perceived by others as being self-aware. This is more than simple introspection, but deeply understanding your value system, strengths, confidence, purpose, and more.
Leading with authenticity incorporates your Emotional Intelligence as well. This calls for self-regulation of your emotions, knowing that as a leader, you have an “emotional contagion” that impacts how your team responds to challenges as well. Emotional intelligence can be cultivated through relational transparency: being comfortable with sharing your experiences and aspects of your character in order to develop connections with one another and grow as a team. It’s important to not conform to others’ expectations, but instead lead from your own values and convictions. However, leading well requires that you’re aware of your values.
A Continuous Journey
Do you know the value systems and strengths of those around you? Greater self-regulation comes from taking steps forward and facing challenges that ultimately shape us, forming the steps along a continuous journey of authentic leadership. As you grow and are pushed out of your comfort zone, you continue to develop new neural pathways in your brain, reorganizing how you’re wired. Your authenticity—your value systems and strengths—can change over time, and you must be constantly aware of those changes, willing to assess yourself throughout your journey. Keep asking yourself, “what does a value shift mean for my leadership?”
As you work through this, your team becomes more self-aware and becomes more transparent with you through positive modeling. Are you putting authenticity first or the goals of your organization first?
The Value of Authentic Leadership
Here are five impacts of authentic leadership:
Employee health and success – When you understand yourself, you can lead your team with increased self-esteem, connectedness, and focus.
Organizational health and success – Starting with the individual, connectedness can spread throughout an organization and bring out the strengths of each team member to the benefit of the organization.
Cultural Excellence – Having authentic leadership as a foundation and fostering connectedness leads to a more content and purposeful culture.
Retention – Satisfied and mission-driven employees who are themselves leading with purpose improves retention.
Peace – Self-awareness and emotional intelligence can have a deep impact on peace within your organization.
Further reading referenced in the webinar: Authentic Leadership Development: Getting to the Root of Positive Forms of Leadership
Are you looking to unlock your authentic leadership? Contact us to learn more about leadership services at Bridge Innovate®.
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