Prepare Your Leadership: Authenticity As A Leader

Hello Cadre Crew. Happy happy Monday Halfway through June. I hope you had a great, great weekend and have a good week in store for you as well. I'll give it a couple minutes here for some folks to join us today. Cloudy day up here in Duluth, which I think is nice and kind of beautiful. I love the gloomy days almost more than the sunny days. Update welcome. Give it about one more minute here before I kind of get started with the three things of three and then get up get into authenticity in leadership too as well.

Hope you had a great weekend and have a have a good week upcoming too. Okay, so I'm Matt Tappe. I work in industrial organizational psychology. Really just workplace psychology. And what I focus on mainly is leadership development and more on the self leadership and performance side of leadership and teams building teams and leaders that really work as one. And as I always like to start like to start with the three things of three. This is a great way to get grounded halfway through your first day of the week.

Halfway through your Monday. About so first three things is what are three things that you are experiencing right now? Could be feelings, could be thoughts, could be emotions, just anything that you experience. Sensations. Just where are you right now? Where are you, where are your feet? Where are you currently in your head? What are three things that you are experiencing right now? Okay, then what are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day? Could be goals, could be something you want to mark off your to do list.

Could also be how you want to show up. You know, maybe you're at work and you have a meeting at one o' clock and you want to show up with energy or maybe show up with focus. So what are three intentions that you either want to accomplish or come across as for the rest of your day today? Then the last thing is what are three things that you are grateful for? So what are three things that you are grateful for? It could be from the past week, the upcoming week, maybe something that just happened this morning that was small.

What are three things that you are grateful for today? Okay, so now we took time to reflect and kind of be where our feet are and feel feel where we where we are right now. I'll kind of jump into authenticity. So if you've been following my lives the past couple weeks, we've been talking about the the facts of leadership. And the facts of leadership is fairness, authenticity, charisma and trust. And really just going back through all the research within leadership, it's really all the leadership theories are based on these four elements of Fairness, fairness, authenticity, charisma, and trust.

So the one I will dive into more today is authenticity. So with leadership, one of the things that we often look for is leaders that they're true to themselves and they tell it like it is. So with authentic leadership, this first came about in 2005 with researchers of Olio and Gardner. Bruce Evolio is one of the largest leadership researchers ever in history. They, they coined the idea of authentic leadership. And this idea is that for leaders, they don't just talk the talk, but they also walk the walk, which is very true and they found to be very important within leadership.

So a lot of definitions of authenticity and authentic leadership include showing others that you are prepared to act in ways that affirm and live out your beliefs and values. Or another definition is owning one's personal experiences be their thoughts, emotions, needs, wants, preferences or beliefs process captured by the injunction to know oneself. And further implies that one acts in accordance with their true self, expressing oneself in ways that are consistent with their inner thoughts and feelings.

A lot there, but I'll break it down in a little bit. So this idea of authenticity in leadership and authenticity, especially in the workplace, has been scrutinized recently as showing up and showing every emotion you feel and saying everything and expressing the thoughts that you have is not going to be effective in the workplace and especially as a leader. So this idea of authenticity sometimes gets thought as, as this idea of permission to act however you feel, whatever you think you can say and just being your true self, follow your colors.

But in fact, you know, in leadership, the people who you lead, it is more important to have a true to us mentality than a true to myself. So what does this mean? Just whatever the group wants. Let's do whatever the group wants and say whatever the group wants you to say so you can stay in power. No. So let's go back to these definitions then. So the first part of the definition was showing others that you're prepared to act in ways that affirm and live out your beliefs and values. So often in teams and organizations, they, they create a set of shared values and beliefs, values and beliefs that everybody can look to and believes in.

So it's important to act in accordance of those. And that's what authenticity is about. Act in accordance to the values that you believe in. Additionally, with authentic leadership and authenticity, this does not involve acting however you feel. This goes back to another part of that definition which, which is owning one's personal experiences. So be their thoughts, emotions, needs, wants, preferences or beliefs process captured by the injunction to know oneself. So what this means is all about self regulation and managing how you show up in order to achieve a goal.

So in the workplace, someone may want to become a manager or supervisor, but they're told that they are too direct and they don't deliver feedback well. So they have that want which was a part of that definition. Their want is to become a manager. So they have to live in accordance of how they can become a manager. And what that may entail is becoming better at taking control of how they give feedback and managing how they show up when they give feedback. You know, building empathy skills. So it's not just about being true to yourself, but being true to your goals that you have to to get to where you want to be.

So often authenticity gets this bad rap because the surface level, you know, authenticity kind of implies that people that think it's just all about being yourself and true to being yourself when you know. And that's true that a lot of the early definitions just talked about being true to yourself, but it's actually in fact about knowing oneself instead. So this is why I tend to not use authenticity and choose to use awareness. So often people think that this also gives them permission to act or act however they want to feel, when in fact it's about managing oneself to act in accordance of their values.

So from what I've read and experience with authenticity over the past couple years, with how it's changed and how people have been researching it more, authenticity is not used correctly when it is not. When people are not acting in accordance with their values and beliefs and instead acting with an interest of their fleeting emotions and thoughts. So the research shows that authentic leadership is more important about acting out the values and the beliefs of others and not just of self interest.

So as self, authentic leadership gets scrutinized, which is often why you hear me use ideas of awareness and setting intentions instead. This doesn't. Authenticity does not just give you per does not say you don't have permission to feel. You always have permission to feel, but you do. So this is about knowing oneself back to that definition. But what it also calls for is acting, regulating, managing, communicating in ways that are true to who you want to be your best self, that is your true authentic self.

As research now shows that we actually feel better when we, when we actually act in accordance of our best self, not just acting out, however we feel, you know, just letting these fleeting emotions take over and getting it out. But it's actually in the workplace, if we can regulate and act in who we want to be and what our goals for ourselves are. Be our best self. Being our best self, that is when we feel better. So, and as I talk about authentic leadership, again, I always preface that leadership is not just a position of power, but it's anybody, anybody can be a leader in any situation.

So in the organization, in a team, in a family, in your community, any situation can call for leadership. And that's why I call this prepare your leadership. As you're preparing and, and building these skills for when the time calls, you can become the leader that you want to be. And as this goes back to the theme of the month, balance with authenticity, it's all just a balancing act of balancing how our we feel, our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts at the time with who we want to be. So balancing how we feel at the time, all these, these, these, these fleeting emotions, fleeting thoughts that can easily take over how we act, but then managing that to become the person that we want to be.

And maybe that's moving up in an organization, or maybe that's Father's Day was yesterday. So being the father you want to be, so that's what authenticity is about, about being true to your values and how that can help others. That's all I have for you this week. I hope you have a great rest of your week. I'll catch you next Monday at noon. So, yeah, thanks for, for joining. Bye.