Authentic leadership is widely misunderstood.
Authentic Leadership – What’s Required?
Authentic leadership requires discerning momentary thoughts and reactions from a steadier stable sense of who you are. This self exists beyond circumstances and roles – leader, wife, father, daughter. Knowing your authentic self takes wisdom and maturity while simultaneously enhancing wisdom and maturity. As you embark on the journey to discover your authentic leadership, it helps to enlist a wise guide who knows the way.
How We Lose Our Authentic Self
We respond to psychological injuries by protecting our true self against feeling the full effects of the injury and from experiencing these effects again in the future. Many of these insults occur in our formative years and are deeply buried. The process of creating protective layers over our true self, and the work of re-becoming that self, is illustrated in this story.
In one of Thailand’s large temples, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha. Though not the most handsome or refined work of Thai Buddhist art, it had been cared for over a period of 500 years and become revered for its sheer longevity. Many events could have harmed the statue – violent storms, changes of government, invading armies. While these events had come and gone, the Buddha endured.
At one point, the monks who tended the temple noticed the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair. After a stretch of particularly hot dry weather, one crack became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold! Inside this plain old statue, he found one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created.
This shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that led us to cover our innate nobility. Just as the people had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature.*
Authentic Leadership Journey – Getting Started
The next time you have a strong but not overwhelming reaction, such as feeling annoyed by someones words or actions, name your sensations and emotions.
“Clenched jaw. Annoyed”
Then count and add the following to arrive at a sum.
[Number of seconds your reaction is at peak intensity] + [Number of seconds before your reaction subsides completely]
Most reactions last seconds or minutes, unless you get caught in them. Getting caught is what happens when you fuel the reaction with secondary thoughts, fantasies, worries, emotions, judgments etc. “I shouldn’t feel this way.” “I’m a bad person.” “Jack doesn’t deserve to be my friend.” If you notice the reaction, without feeding it, the wave passes. When it does, you find the one who observed the wave, a steadier stable self. This is how you begin to peel away the layers of thick protective coating that cover over your authentic self. Reactions are the first layer. There’s more to come.
With guidance, you can find and remove all the protective layers. Then you find your authentic self and you become an authentic leader. You reconnect with an expansive generosity and deep compassion that cares for all those you lead, in service of the evolution of your humanity, theirs, and the organizations.
*The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Kornfield