Authentic Leadership Required
Can I admit that I was a little nervous to record this episode?
Authenticity is complicated, especially when it comes to leadership because it is both hard and necessary – scary and freeing, vulnerable, and yet the most trustworthy thing you can do in your leadership.
It's not that we're afraid of being authentic, in fact, it’s what most of us want more than anything in the world. But the scary part of it all is knowing that we might show up authentically and not be received with loving kindness. But even though that part is really scary, it's still your job as a leader to keep showing up authentically, because doing so gives others permission to do the same.
Today, we're going to be talking about the nuts and bolts of authentic leadership theory. I've been putting off this recording because I know I won't do it justice in a short episode. But at the same time, I need you to know that authentic leadership is required, and that's why it has become foundational to the ABCs of Leadership. So, grab your favorite cup of coffee and join me in today’s conversation!
In this episode…
The reminder that even with the most authentic and healthy leadership style, you can still experience burnout
Why Chaili believes that authentic leadership is the best leadership approach and theory
How the overutilization of the word “authentic” and “authenticity” doesn’t change the fact that it is still needed in leadership circles
The four components of authentic leadership that are important to the way it works for you as a leader
Understanding your trigger events, how they affect your leadership, and the healthy way to respond to them
The role of hope, resilience, confidence, and optimism in making you the most successful and authentic leader
Ready for more? Read this:
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
Can I admit that I was a little nervous to do this podcast? Authenticity is complicated, especially when it comes to leadership because it is both hard and necessary. Scary and freeing, vulnerable, and yet the most trustworthy thing you can do in your leadership. But I also have a kiddo who just turned five last week who is navigating the TK playground right now. And I get why when we talk about him making friends at school in the last couple months in school started, it's been hard on him last night in tears, he said to me, nobody likes what I have to say. And so they don't listen. I think it's a million other things going on, obviously, with foreign five year olds, but he's showing up and he's feeling like his new friends don't get him. And that's a lot like leading authentically. It's not that we're afraid of being authentic. In fact, I mean, come on. That's what we all want more than anything in the world, right? It's the ability to show up as our full selves in every space and have our people say, Hi, you're amazing, just the way you are welcome. But the scary part of it all, is doing that and knowing that we might show up authentically and not be received with loving kindness. And I would argue that no matter what, even though that part is really scary, it's still your job as a leader to keep showing up authentically, because doing so gives others permission to do the same. Today, we're going to be talking about the nuts and bolts of authentic leadership theory. And I've been putting off this recording because I know I won't do it justice in a short episode. But at the same time, I need you to know that you can do this authentic leadership is required. And that's why it became foundational to kind of The ABCs of leadership for me what I define as authentic, brave and creative leadership. And so we're digging in with a authenticity. Grab a cup of coffee. Let's go
Chaili Trentham 00:00
I've been in leadership positions where I would argue that the entire department was leaning on authentic leadership. It was foundational to be consistently in personal development and professional development. And it required depth of relationships between team members for trust and vulnerability and reciprocity to happen. And really, everyone was committed to the greater mission or calling of the work. And so that was good. And it felt right and good. But that didn't mean that we didn't experience burnout, and that we didn't experience bumpy spots in the road. Because even in that space, there were scenarios where Authentic Leadership couldn't thrive, and scenarios that pushed more transactional leadership styles or transactional responses. And then moving into consulting in the corporate space, I would say I've seen more than a few less than authentic approaches to leadership styles. So let's talk about authentic leadership today, because this is a topic I'm willing to show up for all day long. And I seriously, I think it's the best leadership theory. Spoiler alert. In the academic world, it's what we call a root construct, meaning it's grounded in and at the core of, of good leadership and good theory. And so for me, authentic leadership has always been about designing developmental conversations. In fact, my my mission with coffee on leadership has always been designing developmental conversations for authentic leaders. But I haven't done my job if you don't resonate with that, right. If you're like Shaylee, I am still a fraud, still experiencing impostor syndrome in my leadership role, I am still in fake it till you make it mode, since I got that promotion, or move to that new organization, or I'm just trying to show up and get paid, that is rational, that's okay. It's normal. But I want you to also feel empowered to know that learning and choosing a leadership style that you can strive for is important too. It's like playing sports, where you consistently need to practice and get better to show up for game time, right? Leadership is no different. We practice, we learn, we grow, we play the game and then refine based on our outcomes, right? And we get better. So at its core, Authentic Leadership is about moral decision making. And it demands that a person act in a way that is congruent and consistent with what they say they will do and what they actually do. And at the end of the day, it also supports an overall worthy and good or just cause that's all components of authentic leadership. It's also components of integrity. And I think that's why I resonate so much with it always, since I first opened the very first Authentic Leadership textbook that I picked up in grad school. But recently, I've experienced entrepreneurial circles where leaders and said the word authentic is overused. And okay, in many ways that could be true. But that doesn't change the need for it to show up and to utilize it. Right. In fact, I've long said that authenticity must always be paired with a leaders conviction for it to show up as a truly meaningful approach. For instance, what is authenticity apart from integrity? Right, we can show up authentically as ourselves. But if we don't follow through and do what we said we were going to do with integrity, then it's meaningless, right? Or how is it leveraged when it's paired with honesty, and loyalty? So what does it mean to show up authentically, and with that have honesty and loyalty with the people around us, it changes the meaning it changes the conviction of it. And sometimes authenticity can still mean that the leader is being rude or insensitive or a jerk. So authenticity is not always good, right? If it's just a standalone. So that's how we're going to look at the construct as a whole. Okay? So authentic leadership as a construct began to evolve when other leadership styles were failing. Truly, when you kind of look back through the research, it kind of surfaced in the 70s and with transformational leadership, and then was continually researched because we had corporations who were doing making unethical decisions. We had organizations who were immoral in the way that they were treating people or their employees. We had a need as a consumer and as a customer and client to have more transparency from the places where we were putting our money, right. And so authentic leadership showed up and here's why. worked, invited the integration of positive psychology transformational leadership and moral ethical leadership, which are those kind of three spheres of leadership theory, when they overlap in the middle and you get authentic leadership, you really get people first approach. At the center of it all, it requires you to know yourself, which know your attitudes, your actions, your behaviors, and to know those things deeply. And so we're looking at leaders who know themselves and spend time on developing themselves. It calls for a relationship between the leader and the followers who are engaging with one another. Right, which is important, not just top down leadership, but looking at it as a holistic community of leadership. And here's the thing when we are doing those things when we have a people first approach, and self awareness is central to the learning and the growth and development of the leader. And we're looking at the integration of different fields and pulling out the best and drawing out the best from each. It lends to profound impact. And so there's four components of authentic leadership that I want to go over that as I was prepping for this episode, realize, okay, we really could spend a whole episode on each of these four components. And so I think we will in the future. So remember that make a note that there's four components of authentic leadership that are so important to the way that this, this works for you as a leader. So if you're like, Okay, Shaylee, I'm ready to hear you out, I'm ready to think about being an authentic leader. Here's what I want you to write down or think about in the coming week. Number one, component, self awareness. And this is who are you? What do you believe? How are you leading why you have to invest in developing your strengths. And also uncovering your weaknesses and your perceptual biases. It's knowing how you respond and react to trigger events and things going on around you to the greater environment around you. Right. And so self awareness is at the core of, of how we engage with authentic leadership for ourselves as leaders. And then number two, relational transparency, we have to have relational transparency, trust and communication, trust and communication, trust and communication, trust and communication over and over and over and over. So that the depth of relationship with the people we're engaged with is meaningful and as transparent and as honest and true and right. This is a big one for me, because I don't think that you can have relational transparency until you've done the work of the self awareness piece, right? If you don't know who you are, how can you communicate that well to others? If you're not so rooted in who you are, how can you establish trust? That who you are, and what you say you're going to do is the same as the person they see in the leadership position, right? So relational transparency is the number two core piece of authentic leadership. Number three is balanced processing. This basically means that leaders, leaders analyze all of the relevant information that they need leading up to a decision, and they must do it objectively. In short, leaders should listen to everyone on the team, they should take in the diverse voices of everyone before acting and making the decision. And how many of you have ever been in situations where you have a leader in your life who you're like, you do not have the full picture, or as a leader who says in a in a staff meeting are an all hands, say Is there something I'm not seeing here and you as an employee, as an individual, as a follower might be saying? Yeah, there's a whole lot you're not seeing here, you're not in the trenches, you're not the one doing the daily work. You're not the one engaging face to face with the client or the customer. And so it's important that a leader show up and engage in balanced processing and really look at the whole picture, to stand back and collect all of the evidence that they need to make the right decision. Which leads to number four, which is a strong moral code. So leaders who have a strong moral code have internalized their core values. When they exist to they've internalized them and use them in their decision making, right? They have morals that guide their behaviors that are probably consistent with organizational values and mission. They should be at least the right and this is an alignment. This is in alignment with how this shows up in their work. So those four components make up authentic leadership. There's heart, there's people first approach, there's purpose in the work that they're doing. There's a right and a wrong. There's an engagement with the people around them, right? It's not just people first in whatever the overall mission is, and who the organization, the greater team is serving, right. But it's also people first approach inside with team dynamics in the way that we have balanced processing and call on everyone to contribute and give their expertise in the work that they're doing. And then the goal of all of this becomes positive leader and follower development. And why does this matter? After the past few years after COVID, after everything you've likely gone through and in changes that have happened over the past few years? You need these factors more than ever, right? I've mentioned trigger events, your reaction to trigger events, trigger events, are those things that throw you off kilter, right? So it's something that triggers a response. There are events in our life that let us keep going, we like stay on the path, we keep walking. And then there are trigger events that are like a giant log in the middle of your hiking path, and you have to go off trail, you have to respond to that appropriately. In the past few years, we've seen VUCA environments, which Luca environment stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, ambiguous environments. So we've seen it in business, we've seen it globally, we've seen it basically everywhere. And so we have a need for leaders who are willing to put in the work for themselves. And then establish relational transparency and be willing to communicate what that also looks like for themselves and others. Because these trigger events in the last few years have been bigger than anything we've ever seen and have required different responses than any we've had in the past. And that's why I love that authentic leadership leans so heavily on the field of positive psychology. Because at the end of the day, there's hope in all of this. There has been hard there will be hard, there has been changed, there will always be change, right? That the one thing we have control of is how we respond and how we grow as a leader. Like I said, it's like a sport practice makes perfect, right? And so how do we look at our game tape from the past few years and say, Wow, this is how I how I played? And now what can I change? How can I learn? How can I grow? And how can I respond. And so we know that research in the authentic leadership field and the positive psychology field shows that positive psychological resources this is this is the stuff like competence, hope, resilience, optimism. We know that that those resources when we have them as individuals so deeply impacts our actions and behaviors, that it can create an upward spiral effect. So we have self awareness, self reflection and development that we cycle through until we're flourishing when we have those resources. Because we don't give up. We also know that so when you have those core positive psychological resources, hope, resilience, optimism, confidence, you are more likely to be successful in what you do, just by having them more likely to be successful. And so don't you think training people on how to get those and how to embrace those when we're uncovering and unpacking things about ourselves when we're learning about ourselves as leaders to check off that number one, that self awareness piece, then we get to be more successful. So when leaders are developing the psychological resources, they are more likely to have greater trust with the people that they lead. And they're also more likely to develop that in their followers. It's a reciprocal effect, it's a win win win is what it is. So what are you doing as a leader? To consider confidence, hope, resilience, optimism, and learning about that and uncovering that and how you do that, and how you show up in that as a person and as a leader, and how are you integrating that in the way that you're growing and learning in everything else you do for those trigger events? So here's my action steps for you right now, as you're listening to this episode. Here's what trigger events do for us. They serve as a mode of surprise feedback opportunities in your leadership, they create a moment of self reflection because you never know when they're coming right. But anytime, something difficult shows up in your life or in your leadership, you have an opportunity to reflect and respond. So that's your job today. Instead of thinking okay, I'm To be an authentic leader today, I want you to start with this, I want you to engage in a part of the authentic leadership process, I don't want you to be focused on the whole thing all at once. So here's the part, you're going to reflect on this. Question number one, what is a recent trigger event you've experienced that caused you to pause and reflect on your core beliefs or assumptions. And that can be in your work or your leadership. So what is a recent trigger event you've experienced that caused you to pause and reflect on your core beliefs or assumptions, this could be an event that was small or large, but it's usually an event that rocked yet a little bit. And that's where it challenges kind of the inner who you are in that moment. So think about that trigger event. Mine your experiences to figure out what it was because then question number two, what did you learn about yourself from that event? And what changes did you make in response to that revelation? So what did you learn about yourself, when you hit that bump in the road? Or when something that was unexpected and unforeseen? showed up in your leadership or in your life? What did you learn about yourself? And then what did you do about it? Reflection is crucial to how we grow into our authenticity, and how we grow into an authentic leader who's willing to continually be in that step number one of self awareness. So I would love for you to think about those questions and think about those components of authentic leadership. And also if you're willing to hit me with what questions you have with authentic leadership, because like I said, we're gonna go deeper into this in a future episode because we're already past our short and sweet cut off and I want to now so that I can help break this down further, so that we can really get you moving in the direction of a leadership style that you feel like you can own in your work. Cheers.