Authentic Leadership Personal Life Coaching Business Life Coaching

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How To Become An Authentic Leader

Advanced leadership concepts and development program for decision makers going through personal and business life transitions. It is for those who choose to ‘be the change’ themselves as a way to ‘see the change’ they desire.

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Authenticity as a Prerequisite for Leadership

Today’s growing global problems can not be solved using the same methods that created them in the first place. Thus, we must evolve our approaches toward innovation, including a new eye on leadership. This article addresses leadership from a very different perspective. This work is for leaders of BOTH large and small businesses – people who carry decision making titles that want to use their authority to change the world for the better.

Authentic leadership, as described here, especially addresses those of you bringing in new forms of sustainable technologies and green business paradigms; done as a personal choice that you’ve made to create a cleaner, healthier world for our children and our children’s children. Is this you? Then read on …

There is a difference between leading and leadership, between directing as a manager and managing as a mentor. There is also a difference between practicing formulated exercises to create personal change, and experiencing deep transformational change through self imposed awareness. This is done by first empowering yourself as a leader in your own right based on your interests, capabilities, and passions, to realize your unique authentic identity.

Once this is achieved, a shift in your personal understanding and meaning of leadership will occur. With this shift, comes an evolution in the way you are able to help others realize their own power and their own sense of leadership. Thus, you become more of a catalyst for change and less a director of it.

The primary role of a leader is as a change agent. This means change that is not just for one self, but for something with greater purpose than just our own self imposed ideals. Realizing this, is a big step toward becoming an authentic leader. To do this, the way leadership is viewed changes as well.

Rather than placing your leadership in front of others and ‘leading the charge’, you instead consciously follow and look for opportunities to ‘catalyze the change’.

That’s right: I did say ‘follow’. By following team members and watching for ways to enhance their own ‘yellow brick road’, you inject power into the group’s journey – one individual at a time, starting with yourself. In this way, we move our humanity toward a world of peace, whereas the other moves us toward one of war. Which of these we choose to focus on, says much about how we will lead others.

Creating an Ecology of Leadership

You evolve into an ‘ecology of leadership’ by positioning yourself to see others, rather than them seeing you. The UnCoach approach is somewhat opposite of the standard coaching method in this area. It comes more from a place of ‘guiding’ than it does from a traditional ‘leading’ perspective. 

The concept of Leadership Ecology suggests that a person’s leadership qualities are transferred to another through a shared awakening process.

By realizing your own authentic identity, you move to a place of compassion and empathy for others in your team or organization. Rather than you being at the center making mostly isolated decisions, instead your influence radiates out to partner with others. Rather than being a director who oversees subordinates, you instead see an ecology of interactions. This is much better viewed from the periphery of the target than the center.

Plus, it is a place where you are more apart of the interactions with others. Respect is gained because you also risk the edge being seen in your humanity – one that makes mistakes and is flawed. Yes, the periphery of the target is not as safe as the center. Yet, it’s where your true power will be realized.

Once you get comfortable with this new perspective, your actions and your direction of others, will come from a different place – an empathic place, which is the first step in empowering others to their own leadership and the realization of what ‘authentic leadership’ is all about. This is real leadership and it marks the beginning of optimizing your organization toward new forms of collaboration and innovation.

‘Bulls-Eye’ is an Old Metaphor for Leadership

Here’s Where Things Change …

I do like the metaphor of the arrow hitting the bulls-eye, but for a different reason than you may think. What if, as an authentic leader, it is no longer appropriate for ‘you’ to aim for the center of the target? What if your best shot is actually when the arrow lands in the furthest outer ring? Curious idea, isn’t it?

In Leadership Ecology, you want to target the OUTER ring, not the center.

From the outer ring you have a very different perspective on leadership. By placing yourself in the outer ring, you are in the best position to move others into the center, not you. Aiming for this part of the target also challenges your own awareness, and thereby your authenticity as a person. And this is so important as a leader, because people can feel your truth. It is not as hidden as you may think. Most can tell when you are not really coming from your core authentic self. So, how do we change this?

Mirror Mirror on the Wall …

From my wealth of experiences, I have found that each of us see ourselves best by reflecting off of others. In fact, I would propose that it’s the ONLY way we can see our true selves. That is, your ability to be truly who you are will become evident once you surround yourself with others who can empathize with your life path and compassionately share how they see you. This mirroring concept is at the core of all good coaching.

A coach’s responsibility is to be a reflection of you. It must be done in a nonjudgmental way, while at the same time being a boldly-truthful mirror of ‘you’.

The message that comes through this reflection can not be recognized by you until someone actually reflects it back to you. But taking in reflected messages can be difficult. There is often information in what another has to say about you that will trigger your ego’s protection mechanisms. Yet permitting these reflections will help you see through your own forest of experiences and the day-to-day trials of your life. By seeing yourself in this way, your own leadership qualities and abilities will improve as your service toward others becomes more and more meaningful.

When you work with me, you will find that this will happen. You will come to recognize that your values, your sense of identity, and your inner authenticity will begin to shift. This will be done using a no-formula approach to the coaching process. I like to call it ‘UN’ coaching.

Entering the Labyrinth of Leadership

Entering the labyrinth of authentic leadership can rarely be done without having others involved in your awakening process. It also can not be done by merely understanding the concept. To really grok its value, and to see authentic transformation, this kind of work must be experienced in the day to day trials of your life. You must actually walk through the labyrinth of your own making, not just think about it. This often starts with a coach or mentor – someone who can support you as you move toward the root of personal insight. Insights that will include valuable tools for using on the job. Such as, becoming more clear about situational problems, the ability to recognize employee character behaviors, understanding resulting decisions that they make, and how to help each other evolve into the creation of collaborative solutions.

You will also become skilled at both offering and receiving acknowledgment – from a place that goes beyond selfish ego. These are all unique and personal experiences to you and you alone. As you to awaken to a more authentic self, a personal transformational change will emerge from within you that affects not just you, but those around you as well.

The ‘Un’ Explained Benefits of Coaching

The professional coaching process is evolving – it is not what it once was. It’s underlying purpose and intent is changing. We are moving into a new understanding leadership and management that are no longer only about reaching targeted goals and objectives. Sure, these are important, but they are less significant than the emerging paradigm of ‘authentic leadership’. There are many definitions of this concept and I encourage you to do a Google on it to see what you learn. Here, I will tell you about insights that are not often talked about regarding ‘authenticity’ and its relevance to ‘leadership’. I will tell you how Authentic Leadership through Personal Life Coaching and Business Life Coaching works hand-in-hand.

To understand what it means to be a leader today, we must be retaught, or ‘un’coached away from traditional methods.

Each one of us is unique, and too often our one-of-a-kind identities do not reveal themselves through traditional coaching or mentoring methods. Leadership consulting and coaching process formulas only work to a point. How do we address that part of our personality that is not just about creating goals, strategies, and tasks to perform more efficiently? Our business-oriented activities too often cloak who we really are – our inner personal truths.

Our inner truths are the real drivers behind all choices we make in our external life.

This is what authenticity and authentic leadership is really all about. Once your own true identity is revealed, the whole world looks different. How you act and make choices changes as well. In your full authentic self, you will actually become a more balanced self-realized leader of others. And it starts with seeing inside yourself by reflecting off of others.

How the ‘Un’Coach Approach Can Help

To UnCoach means that we will first reconsider what it means for you to be coached. We will reevaluate your expectations, objectives, and plans, based on your hidden personal motives. This is the first step toward becoming an evolved leader – an authentic leader. As your coach, I will help you reveal things about yourself that will bring profound insight to who you are, and how you perceive the world.

Done in a very safe, nonjudgmental container, we will work and learn together how you can best realize a deeper sense of yourself. Beyond that, your ability to support your team, family, or organization becomes more trusting and more meaningful. This is the movement toward authentic leadership.

Using my ‘un’ coach approach, you will not find absolute formulas or rigid processes for building on prescribed objectives. It’s much more than that …

Although sometimes useful, I mostly stay away from prescribed rational coaching formulas. Instead, I rely strongly upon a blending of yours and my intuitive instincts. Now, my own instincts have been tuned over the years to a place where I trust their messages, and they have rarely (if ever) failed me. The real challenge for me is to use my instinctual senses to help  ‘you’ learn to listen deeply into yourself. Notice I did not say that ‘ I ‘ need to listen. Although this is true as well, my primary motive for listening is not use what I hear to direct you toward action. No. Instead my listening is done guide you, through reflection, into seeing your own ‘Aha’s more clearly. Then, as direction is needed, I support you with needed time management and personal planning to apply it to your role as a leader. And finally, after that, we work together to help you give the same guidance for others. This is ‘empowerment’, which is a key measure for how well authentic leaders are applying themselves.

Realizing our authentic self is the true power source of all good leaders … Once obtained, they give it away freely.

As a mirror, my job is to help you generate and acknowledge your own insight. This process actually becomes a spiritual journey as you enter into your own personal labyrinth toward becoming more aware.

Imagine Your Team Being Lead in this Way

What would it mean for your team’s productivity and success if you acted as their mentor or (un) coach, rather than as their manager or director? What if you shifted your ‘I’m in charge’ thinking to enabling their charge?

What would happen if you shift your motivation from being an ‘authoritative director’ to being an ‘authentic leader’?

Start aiming at the outer ring of the target instead of the center, and watch what happens.

Find the Authentic Leader within Yourself

Authentic Leadership through Personal Life Coaching and Business Life Coaching.

For a further discussion regarding my unique perspective on leadership, please contact me by email or phone (831) 454-8046.

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