Discovering Your Authentic Leadership Notes

- No one can be authentic by trying to imitate someone else

o Can learn from other experiences
- Authentic leaders demonstrate passion for purpose, practice their values consistently,
and lead with hearts and head
o Self-discipline to get results
o Long term meaningful relationships
- Interviewed over 1000 profiles, did not identify universal characteristics, traits, skills, or
styles
o Leadership emerged from life stores
o Testing themselves through real world experiences, reframe life to understand
who they were at the core
o Purpose of leadership lead to authenticity of leadership
o You don’t have to be born with certain characteristics or traits of leaders (what
does author consider some traits of a leader?)
- Frame life story not as passive observer of their life as indiv who develop self-
awareness from experience
- Awareness practicing values and principles, even at substantial risk to themselves
o Balance of inner values as much as external (rewards, recognition)
- Life story from difficult time in life
o Reframe events to rise above challenge and discover passion to lead
o Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, medical problems, separation from parents
 Learned forgiving, caring, and compassion
 Wanted to help a wide range of people, help people through life saving
drugs
 Built company around competence, compassion, and competition
- SELF AWARENESS!!!
o Need to leave time to self-reflect, able to recognize external but not internal
o Requires honesty and courage to open up and examine experience
 Become more humane and willing to be vulnerable
o Identify blind spots, what co-workers may view you as
 Overcome denial, must be willing to listen to feedback
- Basis values from belief and conviction
- True values from being tested under pressure
o Values in action
o Inner moral compass enables you to know if it’s the right thing or not
- Intrinsic is from sense of meaning in life, extrinsic is recognition and status
o Takes courage to pursue intrinsic, address difficult questions
o “You’re just chasing the rabbit around the course, you’re not running towards
anything meaningful.”
- Build strong relationships to help provide perspective, affirmation, advice
o Very easy to lose way
o People who you can be open honest and vulnerable
 o Leaders and supporters need mutually beneficial relationship to develop
- Argues the need to bring work, family, community to be same person in each
environment
- Maintain sense of self no matter where you are
o Steady and confident presence
o Discipline, even in stressful times when it is easy to be reactive
o Maintain own sense of equilibrium
- Empower people to achieve long term results
o All levels