CHAPTER 2: BE SELF-AWARE AND AUTHENTIC

Leadership Lesson #2 is the importance of being self-aware and authentic. Indeed, Bird (2017) posits that lack of self-awareness is a classic leadership Achilles' heel and that the long road of failure is littered with leaders who lacked self-awareness.

Eblin (2017, para. 3) agrees, suggesting that great leaders are always self-aware and intentional. "They tune into what's going on around them and notice the physical, mental, and emotional reactions they're having to what's going on around them. Based on that awareness, they are then intentional about what they're going to do or not do next."

Being truly self-aware, though, is much harder to do in real life than it sounds. That's because self-awareness requires a person to dredge up and reexamine painful, life-altering experiences and to consider how they have influenced who the individual has become.

Being self-aware is a hallmark of a leader. In fact, one of the newer leadership theories is the idea of authentic leadership. Authentic leadership suggests that in order to lead, leaders must be true to themselves and their values and act accordingly. In authentic leadership, then, the leader's principles and conviction to act accordingly are what inspire followers.

McGoff (2017, para. 4) agrees, suggesting that living in integrity and "being your word" are essential for others to trust you. This trust promotes interconnectedness, intimacy, and synchronicity and leads to a feeling of oneness and unity. Indeed, trust is considered by many to be the foundation or the basic building block for healthy relationships and effective, functional teams (Melnyk, Malloch, & Gallagher-Ford, 2017). Wise leaders know that trust is critical to their success, and they work every day to attain and sustain it.

Authentic leadership, though, can be very hard to deliver. It takes a lot of courage to be true to one's convictions when external forces or peer pressure encourages us to do something we believe is morally inappropriate. Often, when we turn on the news, we see examples of nonauthentic leaders—the world-class athlete who advocates healthy lifestyles and is found to be using steroids or the political or religious figure who preaches morality and becomes involved in a sex or financial scandal. We also see leaders at the organizational level who say they care about their staff—or faculty who claim to be student-centered—but their actions suggest otherwise. Whether these leaders lack self-awareness or simply choose not to act in accordance with what they say they value, the bottom line is that leaders who are not authentic will eventually lose their followers.