The Role Authenticity Plays in Individual and Team Resiliency

"Authentic leadership is revealed in the alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do"- Michael Holland.

For many of us, the quest to become more efficient in our work and relationships is an ongoing process. Sometimes, without knowing, individuals and leaders engage in inquiry to learn more about ourselves, interactions with others, and larger questions that concern us such as political, social and economic issues. By being intentional about the ways in which we engage in inquiry and becoming “action researchers” of our own experience, we can go beyond our deeply engrained defence mechanisms to create new possibilities for action.

When I first heard about authentic leadership, I was intrigued. When I thought about the word “authentic”, I thought it meant to “just be yourself”. but it is much more than that. Authenticity includes more than simply showing up in the world, although that is a part of it. Authenticity is about becoming self-aware, which allows you to understand with great clarity the values that you hold dear and that guide your decision making. A self-aware person understands how they communicate best, the type of environment they thrive in, how they come across to others, and their baseline for emotional fulfillment, while embracing transparency.

I had spent the majority of my life working within organizations where compassion fatigue and burn out were byproducts of the work we did, and many of those organizations were not supportive of the individuals or teams to help navigate and prevent such things. This sparked a deeper curiosity in me in the role that authentic leadership played in individual and team resiliency. While there was a lot of emphasis on self-care and training provided to us, the response from leadership is what mattered. It wasn’t about how much training or how much self-care was preached to us, nor how much we practiced it. I was the poster child for self-care. Eating healthy, sleeping 7-8 hours a night, going to the gym regularly, and it still wasn’t enough.

As I reflected on my own behaviour and conversations with others in the field, I began to understand there was more to resiliency of staff members than receiving benefits and practicing self-care. When I approached my supervisor about my struggles, I was met with “nobody is well in this field, you have benefits, use them”.

Resiliency is not just a favourable final product; it enriches people’s lives and increases chance of success, fulfillment and their authentic leadership. Similar to authentic leadership, resiliency is a life-long journey, and an elaborate process that develops competence over time, in the face of adversity, and in the context of interactions between the person and their environment.

Authentic leadership theory makes distinctions between three types of levels of authenticity; an individuals personal authenticity, a leaders’ authenticity as a leader, and authentic leadership as a phenomenon in itself. These three levels are hierarchically inclusive, meaning you cannot be an authentic leader without being an authentic person, and authentic leadership is not possible without the intervention of an authentic leader.

In order to develop authentic leadership, we need to understand a few things.

First, authentic emotions, and the role that emotions and emotional processes, means the leader tends to have greater capacity for emotional regulation during moral decision making, and ensuring their emotions are appropriate for the audience, resulting in moral solutions. Humour can also be used to achieve relational transparency and elicit positive reactions and trust from followers. Authentic leaders will transparently share their motives for pursuing organizational goals, as there should be no secrets as to why staff are being asked to perform certain functions in their work.

For an individual to be an authentic leader, they must be self-aware and trust in one’s motives, feelings and desires. They must identify and understand the role their values play in their leadership. Values can be defined as conceptions of the desirable that guide the way we show up, make decisions and support ourselves and our teams, as well as how we explain our actions and evaluation.

Here are a few tips on how to practice being an authentic leader:

1. Embrace a growth mindset. It is necessary in building individual and team strength.

2. Be real all of the time, without having ulterior motives.

3. Be visible. When you are visible, you become approachable.

4. Be who you are. It creates a strong and resilient team.

5. Lead with confidence. You will gain respect from followers.