An Evidence-based Approach to Authentic Leadership Development

Tony Fusco

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351741767
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: Industrial & Organizational Psychology

This book presents the first evidence-based approach to Authentic Leadership Development. It is based on a group-coaching format that brings together small groups of leaders to discuss personally significant leadership issues generally not explored in usual leadership development, such as the influence of their personal histories, the impact of their psychological make-up, and the ambitions for their future leadership.

The book starts with an overview of the idea of authenticity and its philosophical roots, and explains how this informs the past/present/future group-coaching approach to Authentic Leadership Development. It presents statistical and conceptual evidence of the program's efficacy and explores how the social processes at work within the group positively impact and develop the leader's self-concept and the benefits this brings. Importantly, it also details exactly how the leader changes and grows as a result of the group-coaching, and the positive ways in which this benefits their leadership role and the organisations they work in. Finally, it questions the notion of ethics and morals in Authentic Leadership and critically re-appraises the idea of leadership development evaluation. Authentic Leadership Development group-coaching has been shown to develop leaders that are conscious, competent, confident and congruent and as the qualitative analysis presented in the book illustrates, these 4 over-arching categories are made up of 7 further key leadership attributes that are developed, which include an enhanced Strategic Orientation, increased Confidence and Clarity and greater Management Mindfulness, among others. The book also features personal vignettes throughout, which illustrate how individual leaders have effectively applied these newly developed attributes in their leadership roles.

An Evidence-based Approach to Authentic Leadership Development represents essential reading for leaders who want to engage in a 'proven' form of ALD. It will be of great interest to professionals across a variety of industries who have responsibility to provide robust leadership development programs for their organisations, as well as coaches specialising in executive, business and leadership coaching and those interested in new applications for group coaching.

1A brief history of authenticity

In his book In Search of Authenticity,¹ Jacob Golomb dramatically describes the concept of authenticity as “a protest against the blind, mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values” (p.11) and that “we create our authenticity; it is not delivered to us by higher authorities” (p.25). He is suggesting that authenticity is about matching up to some form of internal standard and living in accord with that individually chosen meaning. In this way, authentic people create an individual purpose and direction for their lives that can’t be understood purely in terms of external meaning or purpose. One particular meaning or purpose can never be objectively right or wrong if it represents accurately who we are: it can only ever be subjectively measured and determined by our own internal standard. The cosmos can never justify one way as right over another – only we can judge that, but by the same token, being authentic means you have to take full responsibility for these choices and decisions. For this reason alone, it is perhaps understandable why some people struggle with the uncertainty and angst this can create and prefer to shelter within the values and norms of an existing cultural, political, social or religious system that can offer them the warmth and security of a human huddle. However, if as an individual I can tolerate this slight chill of uncertainty, I am rewarded with a self-mastery that means I am in control of both myself and my life and am able to give to both a coherent sense of direction and purpose. So, authenticity is not judged by specifically what I do, but more how and why I choose to do what I do. Ultimately, to be authentic, these decisions must be made autonomously. It is therefore not surprising these terms have a very similar meaning in early Greek. Authentes means to ‘act on one’s own authority’ and autonomos meaning ‘self-rule’. We begin in the realm of Ancient Greece to start a very brief historical account of the philosophic roots of authenticity and then continue by moving through two further ages and perspectives of existentialism and post-modern philosophy.

Ancient Greece

Know thyself! This is possibly the ancient Greeks’ most famous maxim and is inscribed above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Delphi was considered the centre of the ancient classical world and was the seat of the all-knowing and all-seeing Oracle around 500 to 300 BC.² The Oracle was considered the font of all knowledge and was believed to prophesise while possessed by the god Apollo himself. Such was the Oracle’s influence that she was consulted on all important decisions that affected the Greek world, including war and colonisation.³ A common misconception is that this famous command to know thyself originated with the philosopher Socrates and although he is said to have embodied it, referring to it in various discourses and dialogues, it was in a bid to follow the established wisdom of the original inscription that Socrates himself became known as a man who “in his character, his conduct and his opinions, there are no contradictions” (p.53).⁴ Fast forward 2000 years and the influence of Socrates is still keenly felt, as is philosophy’s concern with the quest to both know thyself and be thyself, particularly in a branch of philosophy known as existentialism.

Existentialism

Existential philosophy concerns itself with the fundamentals of human existence such as individual freedom, responsibility, choice, meaning, purpose and authenticity.⁵ There are numerous great thinkers whose work may be considered existential in nature, but in this brief review we will look at just three central figures: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

It is the Dane, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who is generally considered the founder of existential philosophy. He focused most of his work on ethics, morality and the psychology and philosophy of religion. He was a great thinker, but also applied his philosophy to his way of life, believing that the creation of an authentic life was nothing short of an existential vocation. As such, his overriding concern was with personal choice and commitment in how to live one’s life as an individual, stating, “The thing is to find a truth that is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die” (p.15).⁶ Kierkegaard was deeply influenced by Socrates and praised the Greek for being the first to study with decisive forcethe concept of the existing individual.⁷ And like Socrates he believed true knowledge began with self knowledge. As well as on thought, there was also an influence on style. Much like Socrates, Kierkegaard wasn’t prone to direct instruction or lecturing. He preferred a more indirect form of communicating, allowing the reader to learn their own lessons through personal descriptions of his own life views.⁸ He often did not conclude anything at all, rather just illuminating all sides of the prism, in much the same way that Socrates did by using questioning as his primary tool of enquiry. To this day, ‘Socratic questioning’ is a term and technique used extensively by coaches to help leaders and others explore and pursue their own personally significant lines of enquiry. This method of non-prescriptive and vicarious social learning is a technique at the heart of the coaching approach to Authentic Leadership Development described here. After all, no one can teach you directly how to be an authentic leader, but they can help you learn.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a towering German philosopher, appointed as a professor at Basel University before even receiving his doctorate at age 24.⁹ Like Kierkegaard, he was also influenced by the Ancient Greeks, but found the pre-Socratics more to his liking. Also like Kierkegaard, he was a passionate individualist and had only distain for the herd. He tended to use the term ‘individuality’ more than ‘authenticity’. He believed engaging with the world as an individual was life’s most important task and that we should give expression to life through our own unique perspectives and purposes. He said that when you achieve this, you are in control and you become what you already are. In true existential fashion, Nietzsche believed that there was no one objectively right way or truth to life and that each individual has to understand the world through his or her own perspective. He believed there were no facts only interpretations. When his famous fictional character, Zarathustra,¹⁰ was pressed by devotees to tell them the way, he simply replied, “This is my way… what is yours… for the way – that does not exist” (p.307).¹¹ Being authentic means defining yourself and making conscious choices about your life that accurately represent that ongoing uniqueness. Another of Nietzsche’s pertinent ideas reflecting this is that we are continually in flux and as we are exposed to more experience of life, so we must continually examine our thoughts and perspectives. He stresses that we must continually reappraise and rethink our understanding of ourselves and our world to ensure they remain a true expression of who we authentically are – not to sleepwalk, but to move consciously through life. The purpose of this self-overcoming, as Nietzsche termed it, is to achieve maturity, authenticity and profound self-knowledge and to be “… the free author of one’s own self” (p.70).¹ Such insights led none other than Sigmund Freud to exclaim, “He had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live” (p.20).¹²

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was another highly significant German philosopher who was influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and was Professor of Philosophy at both Marburg and Freiburg universities.⁹ Perhaps the most relevant aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy with regards to the ALD approach described here is his focus on temporality and the belief that to live authentically as an integrated individual, you need to have a unifying perspective of your past, your present and your future. The usual concept of time sees time as disconnected and as something external to you that you simply travel through. However, the existential view is that your existence spreads across time and that it isn’t just the present that has significance, but the past, present and future all join together in a meaningful flow. The past is alive and well and constantly informing your present and future in terms of who you are now and who you’ll become in the future. Heidegger says that we are projected forward towards future possibilities from the experience of our present shaped by our past and that these coalesce to make our present actions and future goals relevant and meaningful. In this way, living authentically means all three domains need to be connected across time in a meaningful way. Heidegger believed that the future was of particular importance when trying to live as an authentic being because we are always reaching ahead of ourselves towards future possibilities in a self-defining way. However, this forward directedness also makes us aware of our finitude and that our lives are bounded on both sides by birth and death. For Heidegger, as for all existentialists, acceptance of our finitude is key to living an authentic life, as it gives all of our choices and decisions in the present a profound significance and calls upon us to engage with life in an active and resolute way, committed to what we have decided is personally meaningful. In this way, we answer what he describes as an almost primordial search for authenticity: “I first hear a call to be authentic. I owe it to myself to own myself. I feel responsible and, in response, attempt to satisfy this call” (p.314).¹³ It is nothing short of winning self-possession.¹

Modernity and authenticity

In addition to these three central figures, there is the work of many others that beckon in any introduction to the concept of authenticity, such as the literature of the French existentialists Sartre and Camus, the existential psychiatry of Binswanger and Jaspers, the humanistic psychology of Fromm, Maslow, Rogers and Erikson and the philosophic psychotherapy of Frankl, May and Yalom. Although the works of these and others are all fascinating in their own right, they are well beyond the scope of this short overview. So, I shall just include a small selection of contemporary individuals who I think are important for this introduction inasmuch as they bring us right up to date – individuals who also foretoken some of the challenges to personal authenticity that we might all come to face in a not-too-distant future.

In The Malaise of Modernity, social theorist, Professor Charles Taylor, echoes the words of all of these earlier thinkers and warns us that if we fail to find the design of our own life, we miss the point of our life:

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s. But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me.

(pp.28–29)¹⁴

In this book, Taylor emphasises the point that when we create the unique design of our lives, we do ...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A brief history of authenticity
• 2 Does Authentic Leadership Group Coaching work?
• 3 How does it work? Part 1: Understanding the process of Authentic Leadership Group Coaching
• 4 How does it work? Part 2: The Authentic Leader’s self-concept
• 5 What does ‘work’ actually mean? The leadership benefits of Authentic Leadership Development
• 6 Ethics, morals and values in Authentic Leadership
• 7 Measuring the impact of Authentic Leadership Development
• Conclusion
• Index