What does authenticity have to do with leadership? If your role involves influencing others or bringing out the best in people, your own authenticity can have a major impact on what you are likely to produce. Authenticity is about credibility and trust. When you are fully in touch with who you are, you are able to bring the full range of your capacity to a situation:  you are more powerful and engaging, more present. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not a replica of someone else. 

You can become more authentic through making five practices habit.  Each practice will be explored in separate blogs.

1.    Know Who You Are

As they come to know their authentic selves, leaders become more humane and willing to be vulnerable – making them more attractive and influential.  When the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness. Yet many leaders, especially those early in their careers, are trying so hard to establish themselves that they leave little time for self-exploration. Often, their drive enables them to be professionally successful for a while, but they are unable to sustain that success. As they age, they may find something is missing in their lives and realize they are holding back from being the person they want to be.

My own journey to self-awareness began nearly twelve years ago and came about mostly because I was discontent in several realms of my life:  I was in a job way below my competency level, in a dissatisfying romantic relationship, and carrying a lot of hurt from my childhood.  Learning who I am has helped me to get clearer on what I want and what I enjoy doing – which has led to the total revamping of my professional life into something more fulfilling to me and a much more satisfying love relationship.  And, the more I am in alignment with myself, the more genuine I am able to be.

When many of us hear the word “generosity,” money or some form of it comes to mind.  At work, we think promotion or a raise.  With our families, we look toward the holiday season or birthdays and all the material gifts which these events typically bring us.  Yet generosity also has a much deeper connotation.   And our use of it can attract people and more pleasant situations to us.

On the professional realm, generosity is considered the backbone to relationships built on trust.  Those of us who belong to referral groups may have heard of “giver’s gain,” a concept whereby it is believed more rewarding to bring something to the table than to take something away. Have you ever been to a networking event in which one or several people showed little concern for you as a person, being more interested in what they could sell you (or, more like, in what you would buy from them)?  Or how about an office setting in which the taunting behavior of certain colleagues made you feel pitted against them, in separate camps?  These situations certainly sound like turnoffs to me.  Now take a moment to reflect on those business relationships which have meant the most to you:  that networking buddy who hooked you up with some fantastic contacts in the industry you are targeting, that boss who stood up for you to some complaining customers, that colleague who worked late for you so you could get home to your newborn.  What did being on the receiving end of their giving open up for you?  It’s likely you wanted to engage with them again. When someone steps in to help me with no strings attached, I feel honored and want to give back even more to that person or to others.  It just feels good.  Generosity is one of those virtuous circles:  the more one experiences it, the more one wants to bestow it.   What a concept:  in a world of “what’s in it for me?”  How refreshing to think in terms of “how can I help someone else?” And how attractive we become as people and as professionals when we carry this mindset.

In our personal lives, carrying out behaviors “for fun and for free” can change the dynamics of our more challenging relationships.  Several years ago, one of my advisors gave me the homework of not doing anything for a whole year unless I could do it with no strings attached.  That meant presents I bought, words I said, “good deeds” I carried out, etc..  It was a great exercise for me because it helped me to see just how much I had been gauging my behavior on how I thought other people might react rather than on the person I wanted to be.  So, in acting for fun and for free, I literally became freer myself because I began behaving more in alignment with myself.  And those around me did, too. Not commenting when my mother says something which gets on my nerves or not getting all riled up when my spouse wants to play another round of golf not only liberates both of these individuals to be more themselves, but it also gives me more space – in my mind and life – for enjoyable things.   And what could be more attractive than that?

Somewhere along the way, many of us got the idea that worrying would fend off future catastrophes, that if we took our eye off the ball and stopped worrying, something awful would happen. If we worried about our jobs, we wouldn’t be fired.  If we worried about our loved ones’ well being, they wouldn’t get sick.  Gratitude swiftly banishes the worry warts – and this for two reasons.  First, worry is always about the future whereas gratefulness is always in the present moment. Consider your list of worries:  could it be that they are about what might or might not happen?  Perhaps you’re worried about your boss’s reaction to your presentation tomorrow or about whether or not you will be able to afford sending your son to college. In either case, you are projecting yourself into the future and imagine something bad happening.  Thankfulness brings you back to the present moment, to all that is working perfectly in the here and now.  Gratitude also eliminates worry because it reminds us of the abundance of the universe.  Yes, it is possible that something bad might happen; but given all that we have received so far, chances are that we will continue to be supported on our journey through life, even in ways we would never have guessed or chosen for ourselves.

Gratefulness is a magical thing.  All one needs to do is use it and the world is suddenly transformed into a beautiful wonderland in which we are invited to play.  That’s because one of the incredible truths about gratitude is that it is impossible to feel both the positive emotion of thankfulness and at the same time a negative emotion such as anger, self-pity or worry.

So which would you rather pick up and nurture:  that lump of worry which makes your chest tighten and your breath shorten or the lightness of an attitude of gratitude for something – or some things – which are working in your life, such as your ability to hold a job, the car starting this morning or having slept well last night? 

The choice seems obvious to me.

During a recent conversation about the upcoming birth of my daughter, a friend of mine suggested the upcoming need for me to reset once my daughter is born.  After all, as a first-time Mom, I will have my hands full not only with this beautiful new being, but also with all of the normal changes which taking on such an important new role engenders.  Resetting will be a necessary process to my integrating this new way of life with as few glitches as possible.   

Then, later that day, I went to a yoga class where the theme was, guess what?  Resetting.  Resetting the placement of my feet on the yoga mat so as to have a firm foundation.  Hmmm, resetting and a firm foundation.   So, does that mean that not taking the time to reset would cause my footing to be unsure?  Probably.  Given the conversation I had just had an hour earlier, I couldn’t help but make a connection between my postural repositioning and my friend’s suggestion of resetting after my baby’s birth. Not allowing the time it will take to reposition, from the ground up, the flow of my daily life and my daughter’s place in that will likely lead to a lot of needless stumbling.  

How can resetting help us in other parts of our lives?  At the office, we are trained to look at what’s not working and to move to immediately fix it.  More often than not, what happens is a frantic attempt to find the solution, any solution.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we satisfy ourselves with not-good-enough results.  But,what would it look like to stand back and ensure our feet are in a good position, as it were, before acting?  My bet is that it would lead to more focused action, less expended energy, and better results. 

What about elsewhere in our lives?  Many of us find ourselves on a treadmill:  “metro, boulot, dodo” [subway, work, sleep] as the French saying goes.  How many of us get out of bed still half-asleep and approach our day as we have every other one – going down the to-do list and at times hitting a wall without once calling into question the motivations behind our actions?  Resetting allows us to come back to ourselves, to back up and punt when things are not going the way we wanted or when we are faced with major changes. 

Take a step back.  Breathe.  Make sure your footing is on firm foundation before proceeding.  Reset.

A client of mine recently received a lot of pressure at work from one of her supervisors to accept an overseas position.  Don’t get me wrong, the position itself was quite attractive:  a promotion and all the trappings that come with an evolution of this sort, international exposure, and – very importantly – validation of her work.  The question lay more with the timing and location of the new position.  The position’s start date just wasn’t fitting with the needs of her family.  And the geographical location posed some key complications for her partner’s professional aspirations.  So what was a woman to do? 

The feedback she received from one of her managers just wasn’t helping.  He was a, shall we say, transactional manager who snapped to the attention of his superior’s wishes without a moment’s reflection. He laid on the fear pretty thick for my client:  “if you don’t take this position, you’ll make [the big boss] very angry, there’ll be nothing else for you.”  Needless to say, his foreboding words left my client with a tightness in her chest and a heaviness in her heart:  it seemed like she would have to choose between the well being of her family and her career.  Not a very motivating situation for anyone concerned.

Luckily, she had the wherewithal to consult a different supervisor, one who went on to exemplify more leadership traits.  This boss adopted a gentle, father-like tone to her very apparent stressed out demeanor. He explained that there would be times in her career when family and career would clash and that she would need to make a decision about what was most important to her.  In this case, he went on to say, the decision seemed clear:  family comes first. 

Armed with this clarity and encouragement from her leader, my client was able to make her decision with more peace, turned down the offer with graciousness, and burned no bridges in the process.  What’s more, guess which of her bosses she respects and follows more wholeheartedly?  You guessed it:  the leader.

This story brings to mind some of the distinctions between a Manager and a Leader which Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith point out in their book Learning to Lead:

• The Manager relies on control; the Leader inspires trust.
• The Manager has her eye always on the bottom line; the Leader has her eye on the horizon.
• The Manager accepts the status quo; the Leader challenges it.
• The Manager is the classic good soldier; the Leader is his or her own person.
• The Manager does things right; the Leader does the right thing.

 Will you, too, do the right thing?