Authentic Leadership

Credo

Caryn AurielUniversity of St. Thomas

April 2011

Introduction

Call For New Leadership:

• In my paper, I explore my leadership awareness, strengths, values, and development in order to optimize my leadership essence.

•  It is concerned with facilitation, service, and partnership.

• Throughout the paper, I utilize a student employment initiative; weaving the learning process for strategic leadership, moral leadership application, and key elements of my leadership development.

Figure 1 illuminates the inter-connectedness between the alignment of my values, purpose, and behavior to the strategic learning process created by

Hughes and Beatty (2005). It also serves as a framework for the arrangement of my paper.

At My Best

• Knowing who I am and how to be my authentic self is the essence of alignment between values, goals, and behavior.

• What kind of facilitator do I want to be?

• What are my aspirations?

•  See Table 1 below as an illustration of how each one of my values and assessment themes are intricately knit.

Myers-Briggs (ENFP)

Personality type

RBSValues

Behind my person type

StrengthsFinderNatural talent

foundation

Career LeaderCompetencies and

ambitions

Extroversion: Directing energy mainly toward the world of people and objects.

EnthusiasticServiceInfluential

Connectedness: Listen and share thoughts.Relator: Have closeness with others.

Manage/Influence People

Intuition: Focus on perceiving patterns and interrelationships; concentrating on meanings and possibilities.

Positive CooperationCreative

Positivity: Upbeat, creative to engender enthusiasm.Futuristic: See the possibilities.

Creative Production

Feeling: Value-based decision making with consideration for others.

Empathy/CompassionRespect 

Empathy: An understanding of others.Individuation: Appreciate everyone’s uniqueness.

Mentoring and Counseling

Perceiving: Open and adaptable to change and a high value for spontaneity.

TenacityAdaptableCommitment

Adaptability: Live in the moment.Strategic: See alternatives.

Theory and Conceptual Thinking

Strategic Thinking, Acting, and Influencing

• Strategic Acting integrates mindful listening and moral values to implement thinking into action.

• Leaders that I consider admirable role models have translated ideas into action for the good of the whole.

• It is my intent to model the same by setting clear priorities and creating space for learning and risk taking.

Both Hughes and Beatty’s (2005) learning process and Block’s (1996) stewardship strategy are integral to my leadership vision and mission:

• To increase moral and ethical awareness, building relationships that promote self-understanding and development (personally, emotionally, socially, professionally and spiritually).

• It is my desire to play a critical role to collaboratively assist others in the transformation process by bringing a genuine positive intent to the table.

• I see myself facilitating transformation through trusting relationships, crafting culture, developing talent, and fostering supportive environments for open dialogue.

• Thus, resulting in raised awareness, performance, and responsibility.

Transformation

• Throughout my recent personal, spiritual, and academic journey I am transforming my leadership patterns to involve collaboration and co-creation.

• For instance, my old practices in management consisted of ‘telling and selling’ as a way to influence and motivate teams. My patterns were about caretaking and patriarchy instead of mutuality.

• I attribute this old pattern to the era (1970-1980) in which I learned management techniques, as well as my past organizational cultures. (Nature/Nurture)

• Throughout this transition, I learned that stewardship asks to serve organizations without caretaking and without taking control; in other words, partnership, not parenting.

Currently

• After a time of healing and questioning my work’s purpose, I chose to return to my professional life personally transformed.

• It is not a position I desire, I now purposefully select my role in society responding to my present context. Currently, I recognize that it is a personal transformation of my perspectives, which is my real purpose.

• “What emerges is not a new job-which would be a change-but some new sense of yourself, some new reality you’re dealing with, some new idea, that is moving you forward” (Bridges, 2004, p. 98).

• Consequently, I have a better appreciation of using myself as instrument; an instrument for inspiring partnership, moral conduct, and creating new vision.

References

• Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming organizational defences. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

• Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

• Block, P. (1996). Stewardship. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

• Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2008). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. 4th

• Ed. San Francisco: Joessy-Bass.

• Bridges, W. (2004). Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes. 2nd Ed. Cambridge: DeCapo Press.

 

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• Burke, W. (2008). Organizational change: theory and practice. 2nd Ed. Cambridge: DeCapo

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• Butler, T. (2009). CareerLeader. Retrieved www.careerleader.com/cf/univ/ustundergrad.html.

• Cashman, K. (1997). Authentic leadership. Innovative Leader, 6(11), 305.

• Chatterjee, D. (1998). Leading consciously: a pilgrimage toward self mastery. Boston:

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• DCamp, K. (2003). Get down to business. In Effron M., Grandossy, R.,

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References

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• Evans, N. J., Forney, D. S., & Guido-DiBrito, F. (1998). Student development in college: 

• Theory, research and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Facilitate. (2011). Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved

• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/facilitate

• Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant Leadership. New Jersey: Paulist Press.

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• Business.

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• Hughes, R. L., & Beatty, K. C. (2005). Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco, CA:

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• http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/reflection_manual/facilitating.html.

References• Lennick, D., & Kiel, F. (2008). Moral intelligence. New Jersey: Wharton School Publishing.

• Morris, T. (1997). If Aristotle ran General Motors. New York: Henry Holt Company

• Myers, I. B. McCaulley, M. H., Quenk, N. L., & Hammer, A. L. (1998). MBTI Manual, third

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• Northouse, P. G., (2007). Leadership: theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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• Harvard Business Review 83, 42-47.

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References

• Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New

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• Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., Roth, G., & Smith, B. (1999). The dance of change. The challenges to sustaining momentum in learning organizations. New York:

Doubleday.

• Sipe, J. W., & Frick, D. M. (2009). Seven pillars of servant leadership. New Jersey: Paulist Press.

• Society of Human Resource Management India (SHRM). (2010). What does it mean to be a

• values-based organization. Retrieved http://www.shrmindia.org/what-does-it-mean-be- values-based-organization.

References• Sudhir, V., & Murthy, P. N. (2001). Ethical challenge to businesses: The deeper meaning.

• Journal of Business Ethics. 30, 197-209.

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• Quinn, R. E., Dutton, J. E., & Spreitzer, G. M. (2003). Reflective best self. Center for Positive

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• Organizational Scholarship. Retrieved

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• http://www.bus.umich.edu/Positive/POSTeachingandLearning/ReflectedBestSelfExercise

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