The characteristics of an authentic leader show that self-differentiation and authenticity go hand-in-hand. It all comes down to taking responsibility for self.
Show Notes:
Discovering Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George , Peter Sims , Andrew N. McLean and Diana Mayer
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Welcome to episode 91 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and we are going to get right into it today. Today's episode was prompted by an article that I read in the Harvard Business Review.
I am never going to be an executive in a Fortune 500 company or work in a tech startup. But I do think that HBR is valuable because leadership skills are transferable from one context to another. This particular article came from an email I received as a subscriber, and it actually is from the February 2007 issue. This is a throwback article. The title is "Discovering Your Authentic Leadership." When I saw the date on it, I thought this might be a little dated. But I read it, and I found that authentic leadership is the same as Self-differentiation. It is the same as being a non-anxious leader.
What I want to do is take you through the points in this article and explain to you how I think this plays out as a non-anxious leader, as a self-differentiated leader. So let's get started. The research behind this article is based on interviews with 125 leaders, including several CEOs, ranging in age from 23 to 93. Their analysis of 3000 pages of transcripts found that there are not any universal characteristics, traits, skills or styles that lead to success.
What they did find these leaders had in common was that the foundation of their leadership emerged from their life story, not just who they were born, but what experiences they had, how they learned and how they grew into leaders.
Quoting from the article, the authors say, "These findings are extremely encouraging. You do not have to be born with specific characteristics or traits of a leader. You do not have to wait for a tap on the shoulder. You do not have to be at the top of your organization. Instead, you can discover your potential. Right now, as one of our interviewees, Young and Rubicon chairman and CEO Ann Fudge said, 'All of us have the spark of leadership in us, whether it is in business, in government or as a nonprofit volunteer. The challenge is to understand ourselves well enough to discover where we can use our leadership gifts to serve others.'"
What's important about this is that these leaders took responsibility for self. Theey took responsibility for learning and growing. They didn't expect somebody to do it for them. They knew that they weren't ever going to get there. It is not about arriving. It's about the journey.
Self-differentiation is all about taking responsibility for yourself. This includes having that growth mindset, having that desire to learn and grow, knowing that there is always something that can help us get better. This is what it means to be a non-anxious leader. We can admit that we don't have all the answers, but we can also strive to learn how to be more effective as a leader.
One of the important aspects of this idea that leaders continually learn from their story (and they develop a narrative that they tell themselves about how they are growing as a leader) is that they are constantly reframing challenges into growth opportunities. So instead of looking at things as failures or setbacks, they are reframed as ways things are learned or ways that people have grown. This is really important because we know that in family systems theory nobody gets the problem they can handle. That a challenge is a challenge. And if it's framed properly as a growth opportunity, then it actually does help us to grow. But if it becomes something where we feel victimized or we feel like we aren't able to respond to it, then it becomes a problem.
So one of the things that effective, authentic leaders do is they embrace challenge and they use it as a growth opportunity. And then that growth opportunity becomes part of the story of who they are.
This leads to the second characteristic of authentic leaders, and that is self-awareness.
The authors of this article note that when the 75 members of the Stanford Graduate Business School's Advisory Council were asked to note what the most important capability for leaders to develop was, their answer was almost unanimous. The most important capability was self-awareness.
Denial is one of the biggest obstacles that leaders face, and self-awareness helps us to avoid that denial. I just did Episode 90 on self-awareness and intentionality. It's worth a listen If you haven't listened to it.
Self-differentiation is the ability to take responsibility for one's self and no one else. This means you are willing to hear honest feedback without getting defensive or argumentative. To the extent you can do this, you will be less likely to find yourself in denial about who you are or the situations that you encounter. And as I said last week, a self-differentiated leader, a non-anxious leader, actually encourages honest feedback, creates that safe emotional space where people feel like they are able to speak up and say what they believe.
An authentic, self-differentiated, non-anxious leader makes this possible and makes it much more likely to hear that honest feedback. That is a foundation of self awareness.
A third characteristic of authentic leaders is that they practice their principles and values. Authenticity is translating values into action. Self-differentiation is the ability to act on our own goals and values, especially under pressure.
That pressure can be the stress of a situation or it can be surrounding togetherness pressure to conform to the norms or the desires of somebody else.
Sometimes it can be both. In Episode 74, on four steps to making a hard decision I shared about the process I went through on deciding whether or not we should run summer camp. It was my decision. We actually had a board meeting in May in which I wanted to take a straw poll to see how the board members felt.
There were 10 members on the call and five were in favor of moving forward with camp, some of them very adamantly, and five were in favor of not running camp to protect the health of the children, some of them adamantly. Near the end of the board meeting, one of our board members said, "You've got a tough decision to make, Jack, but whatever you decide, we will give you our full support."
This was a situation where whatever decision I made, I knew was going to disappoint some people. I also knew that would be the case for our constituency, our summer camp families. The idea then, for a self-differentiated leader, a non-anxious leader, an authentic leader, is to know what you believe, to lean on your principles and your values and do the thing that you think is best for the mission of the system that you are leading.
You won't make everyone happy. But if you are true to yourself and true to the mission, that's what authenticity is. For me, that makes it easier to be a non-anxious leader.
The fourth characteristic of an authentic leader is the ability to balance extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. My experience is that external validation, in whatever form, is a trap. It's OK to think about those things from time to time. But if they are the primary motivator, two things will happen.
First, you will be constantly disappointed. That's because external validation, extrinsic motivation is never enough.
There will always be something bigger and better, whether it's a salary, a house, the church you serve or the title you hold. And maybe you're saying to yourself, well, if I'm an executive director or if I'm a bishop, I've made it to the top. But you can always look around and say, "Well, she has a better assignment," or "She has a better organization to run." So even when you make it to the top, you can end up comparing yourself to others.
The second thing that will happen if you focus on extrinsic motivation, to the detriment of intrinsic motivation, is that people you lead will know that your primary motivation is more about yourself than the mission.
This may be honest, but it won't be helpful. Intrinsic motivation is acting on your values. It's acting on what you believe. It is the essence of self-differentiation. And when your values and your principles align with the mission of the organization, then you are able to lead people in an authentic way. They will see that you are more about the common good than you are about yourself. To me, that's what it means to balance extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
The fifth characteristic of authentic leaders is that they are able to build a support team. They're able to have connection with people around them. They are not lone rangers. This is all about emotional connection. Self-differentiation is more than just self-definition. If we are self-defined, but we are not emotionally connected, we are a narcissist. Authentic, non-anxious leaders don't do it alone. They realize that they are interdependent, not independent nor dependent. And this interdependence is essential to who they are and to the healthy functioning of the system that they lead.
I am still growing as a leader, and I wouldn't have gotten here (and won't go any further) without the mentors, family members, friends, covenant group members, colleagues, all of the people that I am able to be connected with and who have helped me on my journey. Having this kind of emotional connection with others while taking responsibility for yourself is the essence of self-differentiation and an authentic leader.
The final characteristic of an authentic leader is the ability to have a balanced, integrated life. This means having a life outside of your leadership role. I just led a clergy leadership retreat and we talked about the importance of perspective. When we get sucked into the vortex of an anxious situation, we need to be able to get some perspective to realize that this situation is not our entire life. The best way to do this is to connect with friends, family or colleagues who are not as connected to the situation so you can realize that there are other things in life.
You can also spend time doing something you enjoy and are good at, and that will give you perspective. The important thing about this is that you are the same person, regardless of whether you are away from the leadership role or in the leadership role, and that being able to have perspective enables you to be that same person to claim those principles and values, to have that balanced motivation, to have a balanced, integrated life.
The article puts it this way:
"Authentic leaders have a steady and confident presence, they do not show up as one person one day and another person the next. Integration takes discipline, particularly during stressful times when it is easy to become reactive and slip back into bad habits. For authentic leaders, personal and professional lives are not a zero sum game. Authentic leaders are constantly aware of the importance of staying grounded. Besides spending time with their families and close friends, authentic leaders get physical exercise, engage in spiritual practices, do community service and return to the places where they grow up. All are essential to their effectiveness as leaders, enabling them to sustain their authenticity."
To me, this is the essence of self-differentiation and taking responsibility for yourself as a non-anxious leader. We know that nobody else can define us, nor do we want to define other people. And when we are able to do this in an authentic way. When we can truly be ourselves in our role as a leader, we inspire others to do the same. And that, I believe, is what actually creates a healthy organization.
I believe that is what enables people to say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. When that happens, people will focus on the mission and they will move the organization further ahead. It's rarely easy and the progress is rarely continuous. We take steps forward and then we take steps backward. But if we stay focused on working to become ourselves, then we can function more effectively as non-anxious leader.
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