It is often said that leaders are born whether they belong to a sporting arena, battlefield or corporate world. However, every great leader will tell you that they went through a procedure like everyone else before becoming what they became. The Lead for Change series hits its fourth landmark by bringing authentic leadership into the mix to build trust and loyalty within the organization.
What Is Authentic Leadership?
This style of leadership relies on the authenticity and ethical supremacy of a person or the decisions that they implement. The leadership style emphasizes the values, beliefs, and characteristics of a leader. The personal traits of a leader get mixed with the way he plans and implements strategies for his origination and team. They are known to be honest, transparent, and humble building solid relationships on the way earning the trust and loyalty of most people that work under him or her.
The Advantages Of Authentic Leadership Style
Although many argue that this style of leadership is more homegrown rather than built while working, which is not exactly true. Any person who is given a position of leading can alter his traits so his judgments can be more authentic. This is because there are several advantages associated with this style of leadership which include (but are not limited to):-
Trust Building
The first and foremost advantage of an authentic leadership style is winning trust across the board. Once the team sees that the leader is genuine and all orders are coming in directly related to the betterment of the organization, everyone gets on board. This is essential during change implementation since a lot of stakeholders never welcome it with open arms.
Therefore, if leadership is authentic, the trust factor goes through the roof. This makes operations easier during peacetime and especially convenient when any kind of change is planned. The high trust factor not only helps in change management but also during times when organizational coherence and resilience are required.
Fostering Loyalty
Trust is not the only winning byproduct of authentic leadership. The next big prize for this model during normal times and contingency is loyalty which happens to increase over time. Authentic leaders aspire and inspire by developing strong relations with people from all factions of the company. Loyalty itself brings about a lot of advantages in the company by making it more resilient, open to change, and adapting to the changing environment.
Since authentic leaders genuinely care about the well-being of their under-command, this sentiment is reciprocated. By creating a positive work culture and fostering a sense of belonging, authentic leaders foster employee engagement and commitment, leading to increased loyalty and reduced turnover.
Easier Change Management
Once authentic leadership creates core values like trust and organizational loyalty, change management becomes much easier. If workers and supervisors trust the change plan (especially in the digital sphere), they are more likely to adapt and work towards a faster implementation of the plan. Moreover, more authentic leaders are created with this leadership style allowing decentralization of change management, a unicorn-level achievement in any corporation, company, or team.
Furthermore, authentic leaders facilitate change management by fostering an environment of trust and open communication. Their genuine approach and commitment to transparency create a sense of psychological safety, allowing employees to embrace change more readily. Authentic leaders inspire and guide their teams through transitions, ensuring a smoother change management process.
Organization Resilience
Organizational resilience is the capacity of a company to foresee, get ready for, manage, and adjust to any change or disturbance while minimizing its impact on the business. As companies strive to enhance their organizational resilience, there will be fewer instances where employees and managers are caught off-guard and more instances where a well-established framework can be employed to handle the situation efficiently.
Another byproduct of authentic leadership principles is organizational resilience. This goes a long way in helping an organization weather the storm of change as well as general operations on day to day basis. Moreover, an authentic leader not only preaches his principles but follows them for everyone to see. This creates loyalty, trust, and resilience on all steps of the hierarchy, a win-win situation for any organization.
Improved organizational performance
With all the advantages combined that includes trust, loyalty, resilience, and acceptance to change, the overall performance of each individual improves. This ensures that all departments are working for the betterment of the organization reaching targets easily on the way. This becomes an added advantage when change comes knocking. This is because employees trust each other and the leadership as it is authentic and therefore minimum resistance is met with change.
Moreover, loyal employees are more committed, engaged, and willing to go the extra mile to achieve organizational goals making the overall organization performance index improve all the time. This further results in higher employee satisfaction, reduced turnover and enhanced organizational performance and competitiveness. All of these factors combine to allow a leader to trust the change process from top to bottom without having any doubts.
Final Verdict
Therefore, one might not be a born leader or complete with authentic traits like honesty and transparency. However, running into a sea of change, everyone under the leadership will demand nothing less. Therefore, if complete honesty is required, it has to be shown from the higher echelon as well. Moreover, an authentic leader will be an automatic choice to navigate through change as well as the ambiguity and uncertainty that comes along with the change.
However, it would help if you also adopt the traits of an authentic leader and lead a certain way. Moreover, an authentic leader also needs to evolve with changing times allowing for the digital landscape to help him in decision-making and organization building. A detailed discussion on how leadership can effectively manage change follows up next, which you can check out by reading our blog "Change management in the digital age, adapting to a rapidly evolving landscape."
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