Thank you to Michelle Mook at Pro-Development for our latest Guest Blog:
At Pro-Development, we spend a lot of our time developing people, teams and managers/leaders. No matter your role, we believe strongly that we can all be leaders. Leadership for us is about what you do, and how you behave each and every day and the impact that this has on everyone around us whether this is friends and family or colleagues and team.
Authentic leadership is what inspires people. When you are just being the best version of you. Do you love the skin you are in? Do you embrace your qualities and traits, those things that make you unique? Now of course we may have qualities and traits that we need to tone down a bit, after all, nobody is perfect😉 However are you being true to yourself and being a truly authentic leader?
Quite often the answer to the question is no. So, let’s just remind ourselves what an authentic leader is. We love Goffee and Jones descriptions which identifies 4 lovely characteristics.
An authentic leader is one who:
Listens to Intuition
An Authentic leader relies on and listens to their intuition. They listen and trust their instinct and use this to work out how and when to act. We all have the ‘gut feeling’, but do you listen to yours? Maybe it’s time to give it a bit more of your attention!
One- off
Authentic leaders make the most of what is unique about them and are happy to reveal their differences rather than hide them and morph into a poor replica of somebody else.
Vulnerability
An authentic leader is comfortable exposing some vulnerability, able to reveal they are not perfect, not always the expert. By doing so people tend to trust them more and in turn, reveal their vulnerability too. How refreshing and liberating this is, to not have to pretend to be everything to everyone.
Empathetically Tough!
Authentic leaders lead with tough empathy. This is about giving people what they need, not what they want, and this is done with good intention and a kind heart.
So, to be an authentic leader, embrace the ‘LOVE’ of self and everything that makes you so special.
If you would like to know more about becoming an Authentic Leader is may be worth exploring our Leadership Development Programme or perhaps you would value some 1:1 coaching around this. Remember funding may be available so ask us for more details. You can contact us at [email protected] or give us a call on 01904 628838.
