Authentic Leadership- the 4 Characteristics

When looking into authentic leadership, there are 4 essential elements that need to be studied. These include self awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing and relational transparency. While there are certainly more characteristics to authentic leadership than the 4 mentioned above, these are definitely the most important to look at.

Self awareness is important, because self aware leaders understand both their strengths and their weaknesses so they are aware of how their behavior affects others. Because of this other people will automatically look at these leaders as more authentic people.
Internalized moral perspective is when leaders 'align their values with their intentions and actions'. These leaders basically put their morals first and do not give in to external distractions. Balanced processing is basically looking at both sides of an issue (positive and negative aspects) and being able to evaluate these sides before making decisions or taking action. Finally, we will look at relational transparency. This element is the focus on taking all of these previous elements and being able to communicate all of this info openly and in an honest manner.

All of these elements put together will make for a truly authentic leader. One who is honest, open, unbiased and aware of followers feelings and attitudes. Some people are born with these traits, others will be able to acquire them over time after certain situations and some will strive to be an authentic leader, but never quite make it. Here is an example:



In order to be an authentic leader, you truly have to be authentic as a person. You need to have a passion for what you do, truly care about others around you and know what you stand for as a person. If you can do all of this, people will see your authenticity and you can be a great authentic leader!

Executing Goals

Having clear plans is a very essential part of effective leadership. The fact is, however, that it is not enough! Having discipline and determination to effectively execute your goals and plans is the most important!

You see, we've all had plans or goals at some point in our lives. Everyone can create a plan for something. the tricky part is actually executing our goals and plans. When it comes to this, you need to be able to be consistent, determined and clearly focused to execute properly. Sure, having a special talent for something or being rich will allow you to have resources you might not have otherwise, but the clear fact is these things do not come first to having strong determination and focus when trying to execute goals effectively.

Click here for an example of executing a plan.

There will be many obstacles along the way, and failure is sometimes inevitable, but don't let this derail you from executing properly. Be relentless and determined to execute your plan, and you will be surprised at what can come from it. Here is a quote from Alexander Graham Bell to inspire you and help you better understand.

Path- Goal Leadership: The Best Theory of Leadership?

Of all the leadership theories, It seems to me that 'Path-Goal' leadership is the most practical. Not that I'm knocking the other theories, It just seems to be the easiest to grasp and implement in practical situations in my opinion. In path-goal leadership, the leader's behavior is contingent to the satisfaction and motivation of his or her followers.

In order for a person to be a good path-goal leader, they need to be able to effectively remove 'obstacles' and solve problems that are making it difficult for their followers to reach the ultimate goal(s). The leader must define the goals, clarify the path, remove obstacles as well as provide support to the followers. to sum it all up, the main goal of path-goal leadership is to enhance employee/ followers performance and satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. Here is a picture to help illustrate the idea.

It is easy to see how the path-goal leadership theory could be considered the most practical leadership theory. It seems like many of us have had to be a leader at some point for certain situations and path-goal leadership was probably used to help lead. I know I have used this several times in my life. It seems to be the natural way for me to lead. How about you?

Skills, Skills, Skills

Technical skills, human skills and concept skills are all very important in leadership positions. The people at the bottom of the chain all need to have an even distribution of human and technical skills. The middle management needs to have an even distribution of all 3 and the top management needs to have conceptual skills at the top of their list. If distributed this way, a company will be very effective.

for example, this summer, I was working in an office. I was at the bottom of the 'work chain' so to speak. I had to do a lot of work and use my technical skills to preform tasks assigned to me, such as working on social media and marketing by using computers, etc. I also had to be very good with my human skills because I had to talk to customers on the phone and get along and collaborate with my fellow employees. It may seem like as you go up in the ladder, you have less work to do. this is not true though. It is just a different type of work, focusing more on conceptual skills to lead you employees and bring your company where it needs to go. By every level of workers applying their level of skills correctly, we achieved out goal of attaining more customers through social media outlets.

As you can tell, every level of management has a certain amount of skills that are useful for business and leadership. If applied correctly, you can make your company a more effective business with a better atmosphere.