Photo courtesy Takatuf.

Authenticity is in demand. Your boss and your staff want the real, unvarnished you.

Or do they?

They might actually prefer a more polished, thoughtful and developed “you.” Experience suggests that the hard work of personal development can advance your career.

Authentic leadership is easily misunderstood and, as a term, probably overused, but if you’re organization is already engaged in executive development, you might already be there.

Discussing authentic leadership in CLO

The real authenticity mission for corporate education is one of continuous development through assessment, feedback, coaching, learning and practice—the kind of work that true learning organizations are already doing.

“Nobody is completely authentic. I think that’s a myth, that somehow we achieve authentic leadership. We all have hidden selves.”
—Kerry Cronan, a clinical psychologist and executive coach

Populist movements in Britain, Europe and the United States have smashed pretense and political correctness by putting greater value on unvarnished personality than traditionally polished professionalism of consummate diplomacy and statesmanship. And this has given authenticity a bad name, suggesting brutal honesty as a sign of leadership. But in business, brutal honesty is a behavior that executive coaches have spent decades un-teaching.

Randy White discusses ways authentic leadership can work for the organization and ways it can be a detriment. Read it here.