Authentic Leadership in an Era of Change

All of us who lead organizations, or lead within organizations, can point to leaders who have inspired us. These are the people who shape our own approach to leadership and guide us when times are tough.

I learned from two influential leaders at the beginning of my career. I met both when I joined the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in the 1980s. Charlie Helmken, a CASE vice president, was a confirmed rule breaker. He never met a boundary that he did not try to push. He surrounded himself with a merry band of rule breakers — great thinkers from education, journalism, and business who were not afraid to challenge the status quo. For me, a confirmed rule follower up to that point, working with Charlie and his colleagues was like stepping into an alternative universe.

My other role model, Virginia “Ginny” Carter Smith, also a CASE vice president, was the polar opposite of Charlie. She established rules for all to follow. When a new employee joined CASE, Ginny would schedule a meeting to outline what she referred to as her “10 Rules for the Road.” She ran a tight operation, never wasting a minute. She was known for editing manuscripts while in the middle of her annual physical, as multitasking was one of her keys to success.

Both left me with indelible leadership lessons. From Charlie, I learned that the road less taken often leads to the most amazing discoveries. From Ginny, I learned many important lessons about developing effective relationships. One such lesson that has long stayed with me is that you have not earned the right to comment on someone’s mistake unless you have also praised him or her for an accomplishment (one of Ginny’s 10 rules). Sadly, both of these leaders died too young.

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned from these two very different leaders is that you lead best when you know who you are and lead from that strength. In the parlance of leadership literature, this is often referred to as authentic leadership. A 2013 Forbes article summed up the research defining authentic leadership as focusing on four traits:

1. Being self-aware and genuine. Authentic leaders know their strengths and limitations, and they show their real selves to their followers.
2. Being mission driven, with a focus on results. Authentic leaders put organizational goals ahead of personal interest.
3. Leading with both the heart and the mind. Authentic leaders are not afraid to show their emotions and vulnerabilities. They also seek to understand others and lead with empathy.
4. Focusing on the long term. Authentic leaders realize that to nurture people and organizations requires hard work and patience.

In 2002, I worked with then NAIS President Pat Bassett to try to uncover the DNA of the most effective independent school leaders. Was authentic leadership a core trait? Working with leaders of state and regional associations and other heads of schools, we attempted to surface the names of the most effective independent school leaders. Thirty-five names emerged. They all agreed to complete a leadership assessment instrument, the Management Potential Profile (MPPIII), designed by a management consulting firm. The results of the MPPIII indicated that successful independent school heads, like leaders in other industries, demonstrated strong emotional-intelligence competencies. As a group, these school heads received high scores for overall emotional intelligence and for three key emotional-intelligence attributes — mood labeling, empathy, and social judgment.

• Mood labeling is a person’s ability to accurately label his or her feelings and emotions. People with strong mood-labeling attributes have good self-awareness of their feelings and emotions and are able to categorize their feelings as they happen.
• Empathy is an individual’s ability to understand the feelings and emotions of others. Because individuals with strong empathy can interpret the feelings and emotions of others, they often excel at mentoring.
• Social judgment is a person’s ability to make appropriate decisions in social situations based on the emotional states of others. People with strong social judgment respond effectively in a variety of situations at work. They make smart decisions and manage interpersonal relationships well.

In revisiting this study recently, what struck me was that it underscored some of the same concepts that define the authentic leader — the ability to understand yourself and others.

Is authenticity still an important aspect of effective leadership in 2016? As we look to develop the next generation of leaders, should we identify and nurture that authenticity? Although most leadership development experts would agree that authentic leadership is still important, like other strengths, it can have its dark side, particularly for new leaders who are expanding their responsibilities and, thus, walking into unknown territory.

In a 2015 article in Harvard Business Review, Herminia Ibarra, a professor at the France-based business school INSEAD, describes research she conducted on authenticity and leadership. One of her key findings suggests that “the moments that most challenge our sense of self are the ones that can teach us the most about leading effectively. By viewing ourselves as works in progress and evolving our professional identities through trial and error, we can develop a personal style that feels right to us and suits our organizations’ changing needs.” Further, she notes, “When we look only within for answers, we inadvertently reinforce old ways of seeing the world and outdated views of ourselves. Without the benefit of what I call outsight — the valuable external perspective we get from experimenting with new leadership behaviors — habitual patterns of thought and action fence us in.”

1. Learn from diverse role models. You can grow most as a leader by taking elements of others’ leadership styles and adapting them. Learning from a very diverse set of role models can expand your ability to deal with diverse challenges and opportunities.
2. Set learning goals. Just as we set work goals, we should set goals for learning about new ways of approaching challenges. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s research has demonstrated that our fear about how we appear to others can inhibit our ability to learn new tasks. “Performance goals motivate us to show others that we possess valued attributes, such as intelligence and social skill, and to prove to ourselves that we have them,” Ibarra writes. “By contrast, learning goals motivate us to develop valued attributes.”
3. Don’t stick to your story. While it is crucial to start your leadership journey knowing who you are, sticking too closely to it can keep you stuck in the past. As you move up the leadership ladder, your identity should evolve and grow.

These three points seem particularly important in education leadership today, given the rapid changes in the field, with more change to come. If nothing else, school leaders need to be great students today — especially when it comes to the evolving research on brain development and how we learn. The field of education has shifted course significantly in recent years, given our deeper understanding of the connection between social-emotional learning and academic achievement, the importance of helping children (and teachers) develop a growth mindset, and the increasing awareness of the importance of a student’s personal engagement in his or her schoolwork. School leaders need to know how to develop and support an inclusive school community. They need a deep understanding of the impact of technology on how we learn and teach — and be willing to explore new business models shaped in large part by technological change.

More than anything, they need to know how to guide and support an entire school community through all these stages of change.

School leaders, in short, not only need great skills, they also need an absolute commitment to both personal and institutional growth. At times, all of this can feel daunting. But it should also be exciting for those of us fortunate enough to be in leadership positions. As writer Louisa May Alcott said, “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.”