Authentic Leadership - thoughts from the webinar

We were a group of ambitious, curious, and open-minded people who connected yesterday night on Zoom to get inspired and broaden the horizon of ours understanding of leadership from an authentic place. By chance or not, we were a group of female leaders with this extra-special powerful female energy in the room. We were in six different cities and at least four different countries, all connected by the same urge to express more of who we are and reflect this in our organizations and relationships. In this article, I would like to share some thoughts that were stimulated by the discussions with the participants.

Why authenticity? One of the participants asked yesterday a smart and deep question: why authenticity? Why does it matter, why should one care? There are several aspects of authenticity that are important to point out before going into an authenticity in itself. Awareness is one of them. It is not possible to fully express and live the wisdom you possess if you disconnect from your intelligence that is embedded in the physical body, your emotions, and your thoughts. With help of observation and awareness, you can collect and interpret the signals and in the next step decide what you want to create around you based on the input. Authenticity is not about expressing your feelings wildly as they arise. It is about understanding the consequences of acting in a certain way and taking the responsibility for the outcome. It is about owning fully and with integrity what your system is communicating to you. And in the end, it is not about the outcome of your actions, because you live and act in a complex world where the outcome cannot be fully controlled. It is rather about an intention, a seed that you plant by acting responsibly towards yourself and others. Authenticity means acting in alignment with your own true nature.

In your position as a leader, have you thought about how the problems and challenges that you see in your organization might be a mirror of your actions, expressions, and thoughts? In my career as a consultant and coach, I have seen many examples of unaware leadership where the lack of congruence or alignment within the person would cause negative effects around. Practically, you can ask yourself how you contribute to unhealthy dynamics before complaining and creating even more negativity. So the very first step is to go back to yourself and take responsibility, how painful or uncomfortable that might be.

In the first place, the authentic leadership happens in relationship to ourselves through self-respect, self-love, self-compassion, strong boundaries and integrity.

Why leadership? I wonder if we even need to talk about leadership at all when we are authentic and present. From this place, you would naturally raise your voice if needed, or support another person. Basically, you would do what is required to evolve the situation. I believe that leadership is an innate quality of all of us. You just need to peel of levels of limiting beliefs: it could be as simple as that you do not believe you are born to be a leader or you believe that you need to have a certain position to become a leader. There might be also misconceptions of how a leader should be that hold you back from exploring your own leadership style. Since the stereotypical leadership image might not be suitable for everyone there is much work to do in discovering who you are as a leader and enriching the world with your expression of leadership. To be a leader, to lead with confidence and authenticity means also be brave enough to combine the opposites, the less beautiful, and shiny parts of yourself.

Our leadership is within. It is in our intention and embodyment of it through verbal and non-verbal communication.

It was beautiful to see the play of the disappearing sun in our rooms and on our faces. Our discussions filled my heart with love and hope for the future of ours organizations. The webinar was a way of celebrating the day of the Earth by investing time in evolving the natural leaders in us. By that, I hope we can serve ourselves, others, and the nature around us.