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Return To Leadership Development Article Archive   Authenticity: the Hallmark of Leadership Development By Holly Latty-Mann Succinctly stated, "all you are is all you need" to become a highly effective leader. In case you find yourself disappointed in not finding bullets of adjectives, I further invite you to read "out of the box" while I speak "out of the box" on this topic. With this said, I offer upfront that "all you are" is authentically you, and authentic leadership is all you need. Aside from a cooperative economy and an adequate background in your industry, authenticity is the umbrella for all other characteristics and traits necessary to lead a company to heights of success. After all, you ARE the instrument of your leadership, so you may as well get back in touch with your authentic self. You see, most people strive to determine what it is that great leaders do or say so that they can emulate those characteristics or traits. Then there are those who concoct an idea of how great leadership would look; they then will act accordingly. Yet, unless these people have cultivated simply being authentically themselves, they will be driving skills and principles and techniques through a faulty human system. Acting is not being, and leadership is very personal, as in being "essentially you." You may have to employ heightened self-awareness to dig through a few layers in order to re-discover that authentic part of yourself that you abandoned during the socialization process. Yet there are indeed clear signs to indicate when you are operating out of your authentic self. Clear signs to indicate you are operating out of your authentic self: When you are operating out of our authentic self, you have the courage to own your mistakes privately and publicly, to seek input from a diversity of others on problem resolution, to consider negative feedback in the spirit of personal growth, and to focus on what's working or not working rather than on being right versus wrong. When you are operating out of authenticity, there is no need to defend, and should the circumstances require that you terminate an employee or disagree with someone publicly, you do so with their dignity intact, given there is neither any need to offend. When leaders are experienced as authentic, real live human beings with a heartbeat, a meaningful human connectedness is spawned that inspires and motivates others. It also invites an appropriately bold sharing of information in two distinct ways. For one, others can feel safe sharing bad news with you, trusting a team effort will ensue to fix whatever the problem. Secondly, others can feel safe receiving bad news from you, trusting the spirit in which the negative feedback is given. Rather than time being wasted on negative emotionality, the task at hand becomes the focus of a joint effort. Trust is simply a given under authentic leadership. The pathway to recovering authenticity is not especially attractive. It entails vulnerability, risk-taking, and a willingness to expose yourself to your three basic fears: the fear of failure, rejection, and intimacy. Yet the greatest lessons of high caliber leadership are learned only through traveling on these uncharted psychological waters, the result of which is a courage that allows you to recover your authenticity. It is at this point that you unequivocally know that all you are is all you need. Dr. Holly Latty-Mann is president and co-founder with the late Dr. Jim Farr of The Leadership Trust®. Holly was former Executive Professor of Leadership Development at Wake Forest Babcock Graduate School of Management and has enjoyed an alliance with them as well as with Duke's Fuqua School of Business/Coach K Center of Leadership and Ethics. Visit testimonials at Leadership Testimonials for multiple examples of authentic leadership in the making and write for information on their hallmark Personalized Leadership Development Program at info@leadershiptrust.org keywords: Executive Leadership Training | Leadership | Leadership Training Mba Leadership Development Programs

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