Striving for authenticity

Authentic leadership is no carte blanche to simply say what you think. Certainly authentic leadership is based on stable values and ideals, consistent behaviour and exemplifying your own ideas; but equally consists of the awareness of how your behaviour affects others, of the ability to adapt to others and of emotional intelligence.

Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence (EI) develops throughout a lifetime. Coaching by Excellence in Mind supports individuals in exploiting their emotional potential, professional performance and leadership competence. Above all, authentic leader personalities are in harmony with themselves, accepting and even appreciating themselves. So, authentic leadership is more than a quest for maximum achievement, but is rather based on a more profound understanding of the self – excellence in mind.

Authentic leadership –

the model for a world in transformation

We live in a world of constant change, and the upheavals and revolutions caused by the digital transformation are not only more fundamental, but also occur much faster than ever before. There are hardly any branches or sectors that remain unaffected by these changes, and even enterprises racing from success to success today face enormous challenges and have to initiate change where many people, insiders and outsiders, do not recognize any necessity yet.

In times like these, corporate responsibility represents both a professional and a personal challenge. On the one hand, there is the hunger for orientation and the need for leadership and vision and, on the other, hardly calculable dynamism, requiring faster and more short-term responses. So, leaders must constantly understand and appraise new technologies, automatization, Big Data or blockchain and rate their significance for the enterprise. These may be technologies that turn the existing business model upside down.

What does successful leadership look like in this field of tension? What happens when competence alone no longer suffices to transform fears and anxieties into positive energy, so as to create a sense of orientation? In the midst of the process of digitalization, the core responsibilities of leaders are shifting dramatically. Meaning creators, culture shapers and routine breakers are in demand more than ever: authentic leader personalities who know who they are and what they dream of. And who are followed because they understand how to establish relations to other people. At the beginning of this millennium, William George already developed the model for authentic leadership, creating the basis for the ‘gold standard of leadership’ (HBR 01/2015).