This article comes from Entrepreneur.

The 4 Keys to Authentic Leadership

These are soft skills that, if they do not have them, can be trained and enhanced to better impact through the way to inspire and motivate teams. There are four components that authentic leadership rescues, which, if well balanced in daily relationships, will lead to better results.

1. Self-awareness

This ability is acquired from self-knowledge. True leadership is achieved by knowing yourself. It is not feasible to lead others if self-leadership does not exist first. Self-awareness is the ability to go within each one, discover the innate or acquired aspects that are helpful for one’s own development and that of others, and be able to recognize those that need improvement. In turn, there is awareness of the impact and influence that emanates from the person to others, and how this impacts and transforms the environment.

2. Relational transparency

Moving forward in the process of authentic leadership, there is an essential foundation that starts from being, and then, through making concrete, daily actions. The way of being, the ways and behaviors, define the transparent relationship with others. Here it is relevant to be a person of integrity and coherence between what is thought, said, done, and felt. This concordance increases credibility in relationships with teams. For example, a leader who hides essential aspects of his being, or who weaves confabulations and conspiracies, generates distrust. Instead, one that assertively projects authenticity is transparent and fosters deeper bonds.

3. Balanced processing

To develop this aspect, the balance of emotions and the use of the two hemispheres of the brain contribute: left, more rational, and right, softer.

This leads to improving the expression and exercise of authentic leadership by weighing the different alternatives when making decisions, to stop relying so much on one’s own mental models to incorporate valuable information from others and to be able to achieve consensus regarding the steps to take.

From the point of view of emotional intelligence, the field of self-regulation is strategic in this perspective of human development applied to authentic leadership.

4. Moral perspective

The willingness to be faithful to the principles of the person who aspires to exercise authentic leadership is also very relevant since in this way their behavior will be in line with their fundamental values.

The standards regarding good practices when leading allow to reinforce the coherence mentioned above and to create trust frameworks that build bridges with others. The authentic leader integrates, supports, stimulates, motivates, and identifies with positive values that allow co-creating results not only for the company but also considers employees as a fundamental part of that process.

Along with the collaborative, exponential, and conscious leadership, which are other aspects that are emerging strongly at this time, this style shares traits with those, and, among all, they are promoted in the construction of new ways of leading organizations and companies, and project them with more integrity, care and transparency: three pillars of which today’s world lacks, and not only in business.

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