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

Description

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. Title Page Copyright Dedication Preface Part I: A New Vision of Authenticity Chapter 1: The Digital Era of Freedom and Fear The Call to Authenticity On Becoming More Authentic The Particular Challenges of Now and How Did We Get Here? The Dawn of the Digital Age Digital Era = Fear + Freedom Responding to the Challenges of Freedom and Fear The Workouts Chapter 2: Signature Contributions vs. Conformity Celebrate Your Quirks The More Experiments the Better The Upside of Your Weaknesses Meaning Matters The Workouts Chapter 3: Truth, Lies, and Authenticity Seeing the Multiple Choice Questions Killing the Dead Bug View of Truth Big Fat Whoppers and Sweet Little Lies The Truth About Authenticity The Workouts Part II: The Science of Authenticity Chapter 4: Followers Beware…of Charisma The Perceived Power of Charisma Two Flavors of Charisma Conversations That Matter The Authenticity Continuum The Workouts Chapter 5: Self-Awareness or is it Selves Awareness? Selves Awareness and the Case of the Bossy CFO Are You a Chameleon? Fixed Traits, Free Traits, and Real People The Ideal Self, the Current Self, and Lots in Between The Workouts Chapter 6: Balanced Processing and Collaborative Decision Making What Is Balanced Processing? Get in Balanced Processing Gear or Not Three Tricky Words for Leaders Hire a Brilliant Antagonist or Three Know and Own All Your Biases Have a Big Ego and Put It on the Shelf The Workouts Chapter 7: Relational Transparency and Honest Conversations The Value of Honest Conversation Transparency That Creates Business Results Emotional Transparency Matters, Too The Myth of Total Transparency The Age of Transparency General Practical Rules of the Transparency Road The Challenge of Transparency The Workouts Chapter 8: Internalized Moral Perspective/An Active, Unique GPS System Prisons, Orderly Stages, and Elephants Putting Up Psychological Guardrails The One Thing The Workouts Part III: The Master Class Chapter 9: The Centrality of Conscious Choice Debunking Popeye's Version of Authenticity The Reality of Authenticity Choosing Authentic Action Choose to Experiment Choose to Notice the Novel In Closing The Workouts Chapter 10: How to Read Culture Like an Anthropologist Practical Anthropology Via iPhone Is the Organization Working to Be More Authentic? Figuring Out Fit The Mind-Set of a Corporate Anthropologist The Workouts Chapter 11: How to Make Peace with Paradox Who Are You (Really)? Three Selves That Won't Magically Align Authentic Leadership Is a State of Mind The Workouts Chapter 12: How to Ferociously Seek the Truth (When Everyone Is Framing and Spinning) The Truth Serum Question The Trust Meter Is Always Running In Search of a Virtue Buzz Self-Defining Moments The Workouts Conclusion Acknowledgments About the Author Index End User License Agreement