Developing authentic leaders, always able to engage at their best
| Date | 08 June 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-04-2015-0031 |
| Pages | 100-102 |
| Published date | 08 June 2015 |
| Author | Jane Sparrow |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
Developing authentic leaders, always able to
engage at their best
Jane Sparrow
Jane Sparrow is an Author based
at The Culture Builders,
Warnborough, UK. Authentic leadership – what
does it mean, what does it
look like and why should
businesses even care whether they
have it or not? Perhaps, we should
start with a different measure to
understand this better – business
performance. All business leaders
care about business
performance – the question is, do
they understand the integral link
between their company’s
performance and their own
performance as authentic,
engaging leaders?
Creating a high performance
culture, made up of “investors”,
employees who “invest” in their
organisation and go that extra
mile, requires leaders who
constantly inspire and engage
employees to be the best they can
be. This means capable leaders
who can flex a combination of
different styles of leadership,
dependent on the message,
situation and audience whilst
remaining authentic, which is
crucial if they are to be trusted.
And, so to the critical question –
can this level of authentic, flexible
leadership be developed and if so,
what interventions make that
possible?
It all starts by understanding and
working with what is there
already – key strengths and
natural preferences. The
Engagement Intelligence profiling
tool was designed to understand
just this. Based on five key roles
that leaders need to embrace to
become expert engagers of their
people, the profiling tool works to
understand the existing make-up
of any given leader and how adept
that leader is at each of the five
roles (Figure 1). It is all about
looking in the mirror and working
with what is there rather than
telling leaders what they should
be. Only then can work be done
on actively, but critically,
authentically, dialling up other
styles, when needed, or indeed
dialling down those that are
essentially the default position.
For example, through the profiling
tool, I often find that human
resources (HRs) or learning and
development (L&D) leaders and
managers have a low preference
for the storytelling role. The art of
storytelling uses an emotional and
logical mix to bring to life the story
about “why” we are doing what we
are doing, by also talking about
what it will look and feel like when
we get there and crucially what
does it mean for me as an
individual. Instead HRs or L&D
leaders tend to have more of a
natural preference towards the
strategist role, focused on logical,
process-driven action planning
and delivery. In practice, this
means that the “why” part of the
Strategic commentary
PAGE 100 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 14 NO. 3 2015, pp. 100-102, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-04-2015-0031
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