Authentic Leadership

Authentic leadership grew from practice and from positive psychology

Bill George, a former chief executive of Medtronic, wrote Authentic Leadership in 2003 after a wave of corporate scandals, arguing that leaders should be guided by purpose and values rather than image.

Academics developed the idea in parallel. Avolio and Gardner set out a model of authentic leadership development in 2005, and Walumbwa and colleagues later built a validated measure around four components.

• ✦Self-awareness: knowing your values, emotions, strengths and how others experience you.
• ✦Relational transparency: sharing your real thinking appropriately, rather than managing an image.
• ✦Balanced processing: weighing evidence and views that challenge your own before deciding.
• ✦Internalised moral perspective: letting your values, not just pressure from others, guide action.

Practising authentic leadership starts with self-knowledge

1. 01

   Name what you stand for

   Write down the few values you would keep even if they cost you. Vague values cannot guide hard decisions.

2. 02

   Check how you land

   Ask trusted colleagues how you come across under pressure. Self-awareness in leadership depends on outside views, not only reflection.

3. 03

   Invite disagreement

   Before key decisions, ask someone to argue the other side. Balanced processing is a habit, not a trait.

4. 04

   Close the say-do gap

   Notice where your behaviour drifts from what you say matters, and adjust one thing at a time.

Example: an expat leader finding her own voice

Imagine a finance director who has moved to Bahrain from abroad. Keen to fit in, she copies her predecessor's formal style and her team finds her distant. Working on authentic leadership, she keeps the respect for hierarchy the culture expects, but starts explaining her reasoning, admits when she is still learning the market, and asks for her team's local knowledge. Trust grows because people can now read her.

Authenticity is not saying everything you feel

The most common misreading is treating authenticity as permission to stay exactly as you are. Herminia Ibarra describes this as the authenticity paradox: leaders who cling to a fixed idea of their true self can struggle to grow into new roles. Authentic leaders adapt their style while staying anchored in their values.

It is also different from values-based leadership, which focuses on the values themselves; authentic leadership adds self-awareness and openness about who you are.