Self assessment is crucial for authentic leadership
Critical self assessment and being honest with one’s self during periods of reflection, demonstrates maturity and a heightened knowledge of strengths and weaknesses. For an authentic leader, this is a constant process and strengthens their ability to make good choices when presented with decisions that need to be made based off limited information in situations of potential turbidity.
This particular quality is developed over time, as a leader experiences triumphs, but more importantly from the perspective of personal development, failures and defeats. This is due to the fact that more is learnt from mistakes and failures than from victories. It is easy for a leader to congratulate themselves and receive praise when everything is going well for them and their team, but it is harder for a leader to perform their function during times of adversity, turmoil and heading in an unknown direction.
By conducting critical self assessment, an authentic leader not only learns and evolves as a leader, but they also develop self confidence. Self confidence is generated by having a heightened level of self awareness, realistic process of self assessment and a tough and affirmative sense of self worth. For a leader to demonstrate the attributes and attitude required to install confidence within their followers, they must have a heightened level of self confidence in order to feel comfortable in making decisions under pressure and stress.
A leader that lacks the ability to look at their own performance, attitudes and behaviours with a focus on critical self analysis, may be able to achieve limited outcomes that are acceptable in the short term, but they will never fully develop and improve their authentic leadership qualities or personality in the medium to long term.
Communication is critical for genuine leaders
As a leader travels through the constant process of self evaluation, a genuine leader will rarely conduct this process in isolation, and will seek input from mentors, peers and even subordinates. The ability to have honest conversations, without hubris, in order to gain others opinions and observations on a leaders performance is vital to improvement and self reflection. Only by having open channels of communication, that dialogue can travel to and from a leader, can an individual be made aware of flaws in their performance or character.
Criticism is not always easy to process as the natural reaction to negative feedback is to immediately feel defensive and justify why decisions or actions have been made. These negative emotions can cause a leader to become ‘closed off’ to feedback, both positive and negative, when it is given from an individual a leader may consider inferior in experience, status or capability.
Maturity and Openness
Authentic leaders have the quality of maturity and openness with the people around them. They engage with their personnel regularly, both formally and informally, in settings their employees feel comfortable in, promoting the sharing of information. They demonstrate active listening techniques and listen more than they talk, coaxing information from the other person.
Without this, a leader can potentially go through the process of self reflection, only using information they have self generated to guide them. Authentic leaders have the humility, honesty and maturity to listen to and assess others observations and assessments of their performance as part of the ongoing self awareness process. A leader that does not ask for, seek or accept input from the people around them will not promote communication as a key theme within their team. As part of their leadership ethos, their work force needs to feel that they can freely pass information vertically and laterally.
A genuine leader will be thirsty for input in an attempt to improve themselves and to not just validate decisions that have been made, but to learn from them. A leader that does not promote communication, up and down the organisation, will lack the ability to remain in touch with not only their people, but also themselves. In short, communication should be considered vital for leadership to be effective.