Goffee Rob, Jones Gareth
London Business School, England.
Harv Bus Rev. 2005 Dec;83(12):86-94, 153.
Leaders and followers both associate authenticity with sincerity, honesty, and integrity. It's the real thing--the attribute that uniquely defines great managers. But while the expression of a genuine self is necessary for great leadership, the concept of authenticity is often misunderstood, not least by leaders themselves. They often assume that authenticity is an innate quality--that a person is either genuine or not. In fact, the authors say, authenticity is largely defined by what other people see in you and, as such, can to a great extent be controlled by you. In this article, the authors explore the qualities of authentic leadership. To illustrate their points, they recount the experiences of some of the authentic leaders they have known and studied, including the BBC's Greg Dyke, Nestlé's Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, and Marks & Spencer's Jean Tomlin. Establishing your authenticity as a leader is a two-part challenge. You have to consistently match your words and deeds; otherwise, followers will never accept you as authentic. But it is not enough just to practice what you preach. To get people to follow you, you also have to get them to relate to you. This means presenting different faces to different audiences--a requirement that many people find hard to square with authenticity. But authenticity is not the product of manipulation. It accurately reflects aspects of the leader's inner self, so it can't be an act. Authentic leaders seem to know which personality traits they should reveal to whom, and when. Highly attuned to their environments, authentic leaders rely on an intuition born of formative, sometimes harsh experiences to understand the expectations and concerns of the people they seek to influence. They retain their distinctiveness as individuals, yet they know how to win acceptance in strong corporate and social cultures and how to use elements of those cultures as a basis for radical change.
领导者和追随者都将真实性与真诚、诚实和正直联系在一起。这是实实在在的东西——是定义伟大管理者的独特属性。但是，虽然展现真实的自我对于伟大的领导力来说是必要的，但真实性的概念却常常被误解，尤其是领导者自己。他们常常认为真实性是一种天生的品质——一个人要么真实，要么不真实。事实上，作者们说，真实性很大程度上是由他人对你的看法所定义的，因此在很大程度上你可以对其加以控制。在本文中，作者们探讨了真实领导力的特质。为了阐明他们的观点，他们讲述了一些他们认识和研究过的真实领导者的经历，包括英国广播公司的格雷格·戴克、雀巢公司的彼得·布拉贝克 - 莱特马特以及玛莎百货的琼·汤姆林。确立你作为领导者的真实性是一个分为两部分的挑战。你必须始终言行一致；否则，追随者永远不会认为你是真实的。但仅仅做到言行一致是不够的。为了让人们追随你，你还必须让他们与你产生共鸣。这意味着要在不同的受众面前展现不同的面孔——这一要求许多人觉得难以与真实性相契合。但真实性并非操纵的产物。它准确地反映了领导者内心自我的各个方面，所以它不可能是一种伪装。真实的领导者似乎知道他们应该向谁、在何时展现哪些个性特质。真实的领导者高度适应他们所处的环境，依靠源于成长过程中有时是严酷经历所产生的直觉来理解他们试图影响的人的期望和关切。他们保持自己作为个体的独特性，但他们知道如何在强大的公司和社会文化中赢得认可，以及如何利用这些文化的元素作为彻底变革的基础。
