Charisma and Authenticity in Leadership

It’s no secret to those who know me that I don’t like business double talk, and so far the SLP has been pretty much free of it. But this morning, there was a slight run, but through it, I caught a word (constructivism in action!) that got me thinking.

Authentic assessment is something that teachers have been going after for quite some time, but this was the first time I had heard about it in the terms of a leadership role. Yes, there are loads of examples of people being fake, and others of being real, but I just hadn’t heard authentic being used as a descriptor. Following that twigging, we did an exercise and had some reflection time and it was then I had a bit of an epiphany.

An authentic leader is valued because they are predictable in their actions and those actions are predictable because they come from some core values of what the individual sees as being right, wrong and grey. This is all fine and dandy, but we all know of leaders who are not like that – who waffle and are in the position of leadership for often nothing more than their charisma. Charisma is also a desirable trait in a leader, as it makes the individual more palatable, but it seems that often that charisma is anchored to pleasing others and “working from a pulse” making their decisions shift in direction on a whim.

This got me thinking that both these characteristics of leaders are beacons to which people are drawn, but how are we to know the difference? Can they co exist? I think they can, there are charismatic leaders who lead from the heart and motivate great change in their world – Ghandi, King, Trudeau and Kennedy. But there are others who beat around the Bush (not too obvious) or Harp (er… did I do it again?) and lead based more on a populous notions and base what they do on the lowest common denominator (some motivation theory there… keep people down and they don’t have time to notice that things are falling down around them). So how do we tell the difference? When do we need to? I don’t know. But I hope I’ll get some insight through the course.