The Art of Authenticity: Tools to Become an Authentic Leader and Your Best Self

Leverage your authentic self into a valuable leadership strategy The Art of Authenticity is a guide to becoming a better leader by achieving your best self. All people bring different sides of themselves to various situations. This book will show you how to broaden and deepen your effectiveness by presenting the most appropriate side of yourself. Dr. Karissa Thacker is the management psychologist called on by over two hundred Fortune 500 companies to work with high potential leaders. This book provides you with her expert guidance, based on validated psychological research and artful application of psychological principles to actual business situations, to help you become an authentic leader. You'll learn how to lead through reflection, action, and conscious choice, and how to maintain your guiding principles while effectively leading your team. By replacing habitual reactions with authentic ones, you'll find that you're modeling good behavior and effective decision-making—and that authenticity is contagious. This guide equips you with the tools and skills you need to be the catalyst of positive change your organization needs. How do you remain authentic while being an effective leader? This book argues that the question isn't a duality. Authenticity is the best way to lead, and the only way to maintain sustainable success as an organization. This insightful guide shows you how to find your authentic self, and leverage that into an effective, executable leadership strategy. Become authentic in a way that befits your values Show loyalty, honesty, ethics, and consideration Maintain authenticity in leadership roles Make conscious choices instead of blind reactions Some are born to lead, other must be taught, but all leaders must work to retain their own values and basic sense of self. A simple pause can mean the difference between a knee-jerk reaction and an authentic decision, and the effects ripple throughout your organization. The Art of Authenticity is your guidebook to finding the true authentic leader within, and leading from the inside out for the long haul.  

Table of Contents:
Preface xi Part I A New Vision of Authenticity 1 Chapter 1 The Digital Era of Freedom and Fear 3 The Call to Authenticity 4 On Becoming More Authentic 5 The Particular Challenges of Now and How Did We Get Here? 8 The Dawn of the Digital Age 11 Digital Era = Fear + Freedom 14 Responding to the Challenges of Freedom and Fear 15 The Workouts 16 Chapter 2 Signature Contributions vs. Conformity 18 Celebrate Your Quirks 20 The More Experiments the Better 22 The Upside of Your Weaknesses 25 Meaning Matters 28 The Workouts 32 Chapter 3 Truth, Lies, and Authenticity 33 Seeing the Multiple Choice Questions 34 Killing the Dead Bug View of Truth 35 Big Fat Whoppers and Sweet Little Lies 40 The Truth About Authenticity 44 The Workouts 46 Part II The Science of Authenticity 49 Chapter 4 Followers Beware of Charisma 51 The Perceived Power of Charisma 52 Two Flavors of Charisma 55 Conversations That Matter 58 The Authenticity Continuum 67 The Workouts 68 Chapter 5 Self-Awareness or Is It Selves Awareness? 70 Selves Awareness and the Case of the Bossy CFO 71 Are You a Chameleon? 74 Fixed Traits, Free Traits, and Real People 78 The Ideal Self, the Current Self, and Lots in Between 81 The Workouts 83 Chapter 6 Balanced Processing and Collaborative Decision Making 85 What Is Balanced Processing? 86 Get in Balanced Processing Gear or Not 89 Three Tricky Words for Leaders 91 Hire a Brilliant Antagonist or Three 93 Know and Own All Your Biases 95 Have a Big Ego and Put It on the Shelf 99 The Workouts 101 Chapter 7 Relational Transparency and Honest Conversations 102 The Value of Honest Conversation 104 Transparency That Creates Business Results 105 Emotional Transparency Matters, Too 107 The Myth of Total Transparency 109 The Age of Transparency 111 General Practical Rules of the Transparency Road 113 The Challenge of Transparency 116 The Workouts 117 Chapter 8 Internalized Moral Perspective/An Active, Unique GPS System 118 Prisons, Orderly Stages, and Elephants 122 Putting Up Psychological Guardrails 129 The One Thing 131 The Workouts 132 Part III The Master Class 133 Chapter 9 The Centrality of Conscious Choice 135 Debunking Popeye’s Version of Authenticity 137 The Reality of Authenticity 139 Choosing Authentic Action 140 Choose to Experiment 142 Choose to Notice the Novel 144 In Closing 146 The Workouts 147 Chapter 10 How to Read Culture Like an Anthropologist 149 Practical Anthropology Via iPhone 150 Is the Organization Working to Be More Authentic? 154 Figuring Out Fit 155 The Mind-Set of a Corporate Anthropologist 157 The Workouts 164 Chapter 11 How to Make Peace with Paradox 166 Who Are You (Really)? 171 Three Selves That Won’t Magically Align 173 Authentic Leadership Is a State of Mind 175 The Workouts 180 Chapter 12 How to Ferociously Seek the Truth (When Everyone Is Framing and Spinning) 182 The Truth Serum Question 184 The Trust Meter Is Always Running 188 In Search of a Virtue Buzz 192 Self-Defining Moments 197 The Workouts 198 Conclusion 199 Notes 201 Acknowledgments 209 About the Author 211 Index 213 

About the Author :
Karissa Thacker is the founder and president of Strategic Performance Solutions, Inc., a management-consulting firm focused on creating innovative solutions in the space of human performance and satisfaction at work. She is a widely respected management psychologist who has served as a consultant for over 200 Fortune 500 companies including UPS, Best Buy, and AT&T. She also serves as adjunct faculty at the Lerner School of Business at the University of Delaware.