Authentic Leadership, What it Means to be Authentic.

Authentic Leadership is when you are truly not only a but The Leader. Unauthentic leadership is when you see people scrambling to be something they really are not. They take on personas, or maybe they get a promotion and act other than you know them to be. That is not authentic. The definition of authenticity is, “not false or copied; genuine; real.”

Therefore if you are dealing with a person before they get a leadership role, and you are around them after they have the leadership role, you know that the person has not changed, or become something that they are not, because of the title.

There is another definition of authentic leadership. It is someone who genuinely is who they are supposed to be and an expert at what they are supposed to be an expert in. We have all known people who have been in a position of leadership, but their ship was sinking. The people who worked for them hated them, they purposely hurt people, and they were self-centered, all about their gain, and their position with little to no regard for the well-being of others. This is more autocratic than authentic.

It does not require skill to intimidate people, crack a whip, or hold a check over someone’s head. That would be defined as acquired leadership. An authentic leader is a leader when someone is watching, and when there is no one looking, when they have followers, or when they are all alone. Authentic means genuine, so authentic leaders are not sound-byte centered, they are not careful about who’s listening, and they genuinely are who they are; whether you like it or not. They are usually fair and equitable to all.

Like them or not, you respect them. Why? They are Authentically themselves, and they do not change under pressure. They are dependable, real, and honest.