Authentic Leadership Style Essay

While due to the reason that Authentic Leadership is still in the formative phase, the textbook by Northouse provides different definitions of this type of leadership depending on the viewpoints that make this leadership style very broad compared to other more defined leadership styles, I do find Authentic Leadership as a compelling theory. While it is a broad style, it is also very complete by having different approaches that fulfill the goal of explaining the different components of this style. This leadership style has four skills need as Northouse (2016) describes that “ it is important for leaders to have self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, and a relational transparency to be authentic” (pg. 206), as

well as it develops over time. At the clinic I currently volunteer, I was present when the floor manager was training one of the volunteers who had another position to take over as a manager. While explaining everything, the previous manager said “ remember, now you are the one running this with the team. What I am teaching you might not be the best for you and the team, you have to make your own decisions and figure out what is the best for you and the team after I go”. Now as the new manager, this person is still trying to figure out how to balance everything and give his best every friday at clinic. While this person is an expert on what he used to do in the past, one can still see that he is not authentic as the manager, since he does not feel completely comfortable with the position, which is understandable since he has a lot of tasks to complete in a short period of time. While he has the moral reasoning, has relational transparency, he still lacks self-confidence, and is currently working on his balanced processing skills. This manager was an authentic leader as the lead member on another division at the clinic, since he had all these skills, as well as was passionate, had strong communication and relationship with his team, had self discipline, and was very efficient at his old job, now he has to become comfortable with his position and have the confidence that all of the followers of the team have on him, to be able to be an authentic leader at this new position. This example shows that while someone has the skills and previous experience as a leader, being an authentic leader requires passion, compassion, consistency, connectedness, and behavior, and while this person had all of this at his old position, he is now working on developing and strenghtening these as a new leader.

Another example that I can associate with authentic leadership is one that I experienced in college.

When I started as an intern at a health study I had one supervisor, but what I did not know until after being there for two months, was that the project manager was someone else who was on maternity leave when I was hired. It was hard for me to see that person as my supervisor and leader, since according to what I had experienced my previous supervisor was a great leader for the study and for the interns. But as I started knowing the manager after she came back from maternity leave, I realized that the reason why she was the manager and not the other person was that she was authentic, and had the capacities, moral reasoning, self confidence, and transparency to make decisions, establish a plan, and have good communication and relationship with the study participants and interns. As Northouse (2016) describes that “authenticity requires leaders to do what is “right” and “good” for their followers and society. Authentic leaders understand their own values, place followers’ needs above their own, and work with followers to align their interests in order to create a greater common good” (pgs. 206-207), making this theory a complete type of leadership style that involves a trustworthy leader closely involved with his

followers.