Authentic Leadership

In what ways are you a leader? It might be at work in a formal leadership role or an informal role that you fill for your organization. It could also be for your family. Maybe you have children, or you're the eldest sibling leading your other siblings, or maybe you're not the oldest, but you might act like it in a leadership role for me, I've been a captain on sports teams growing up, and I'm currently in an assistant manager role at a performance center on an army base where I lead five of my peers who like myself.

We all have master's degrees in sports psychology, and we work with soldiers to directly enhance their mental performance and seeing it firsthand. Leadership is a valuable skill set that you can develop and grow in. It's important to think about your leadership style. In other words, how do you lead? So think about that. What is your leadership style? I've conducted formal trainings on leadership with plenty of soldiers, and in my experience working with the army, this is a relevant topic because some soldiers might feel the pressure to lead a certain way.

For example, you might have seen the drill sergeants in the movies and in tv. But at the end of the day, drill sergeants are just people and that's who we work with a lot. In my job, some drill sergeants act in ways that they feel they should do, like they're constantly yelling or they're filtering themselves to feel like they always have to appear tough or hard nosed. And maybe that's because that's how they were led, or they think that that's how they should lead. And similarly, you might be in a position where you feel like you need to act a certain way in whatever position you're in.

Maybe you're a supervisor who acts like a boss you've previously had, or you were a parent who raises your children the way you were raised. So ask yourself, is your leadership style authentic to who you are and the values that you hold? Because that's what authentic leadership is all about. And that's what we're going to talk about in this video. I'm not going to come up here as a guru and tell you that there's a perfect way to lead, because there is no perfect way to lead. You can pick and choose from different leadership styles and figure out which one is most authentic to you.

And being an authentic leader just means that you have continual growth as a leader through self awareness, your ability to self regulate, and you have effective relationships with you and your followers that are transparent, open and trusting. To be a true authentic leader, you need to know a lot about yourself. Again, that self awareness piece. You need to know where you stand on important issues, your values and beliefs. Align those values with your actions over time and across different situations, and then convey to your followers and other people around you through your words and actions what you represent as a person.

Some of the benefits of of being an authentic leader or following someone who's an authentic leader can include you as the leader. Being more adaptable, having better decision making, and having a clear guide for how to act. That reduces the energy it takes to make decisions in critical moments where there's ambiguity going around. You have that vision and that guy to rely on. So you can just go act in accordance with that vision. Also, the organization or the team has increased commitment to the goals at hand.

The purpose they have better satisfaction, and they have ultimately better performance. Also, the followers will be more engaged with you. They will have more hope or optimism, and they have more confidence and satisfaction again in their jobs. To help start your journey towards being more of an authentic leader, and perhaps the most important part of this video, there are three things you can do to do that. Number one is finding your core values. These are your guiding principles or your north star.

And you can do this by finding two to three main values that you find to be your priorities. Just two to three, don't go off the rails and do too many. You want to find the priority values that you have. For me, I value as a leader, trust, growth, and gratitude. And I've outlined specific behaviors to show those values to the people around me. Number two is know your why. Why do you do what you do, either in your profession or your leadership role, wherever that might be? For me, I want to help others succeed, and I want myself and others around me to enjoy the work that we do.

So I try to make it a fun environment, and I've also been around some pretty bad leaders, so I'm trying to be the change that I want to see, and that is part of my why. And finally, at number three, understand your beliefs about what a good leader is. A very easy way to understand this is to complete the prompt. A good leader is blank. That can be a few sentences or a few descriptions or phrases about what you think a good leader looks like and how they behave. I think of good leaders, for example, as being consistent and genuine, consistent day to day genuine in the relationships they create and the values that they have.

Again, I'm sure a lot of you are leaders, whether it be a formal role at work or an informal role at home or elsewhere with your friend, group, whatever that might be. A lot of you are leaders on this Cadre platform. Be clear on the leader you want to be, and completing these three steps that I just outlined will help give you a vision for what that looks like to be an authentic leader.