Authentic Leadership E-book White

Authentic Leadership 8 keys to leading people successfully (without selling your soul) Neil Crofts

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

Introduction Authentic leadership is the highest and most powerful level of leadership yet understood.  The worlds authentic leaders achieve remarkable things in business and society. They are passionate, focussed, committed articulate, controversial, socially conscious and inspirational. Authentic leadership is assumed rather than appointed, it is dynamic rather than hierarchical. Authentic leadership requires a high level of self-knowledge and integrity. Authentic leaders empower people around them to achieve their best through a coaching and facilitative style of leadership.

Authentic leadership creates a virtuous spiral of growth and development leading to confidence, self-belief and success for individuals, teams and organisations. Authentic leadership goes beyond other levels of leadership by seeking the win, win, win, win in all situations. A win for the individual, a win for the team, a win for the organisation and a win for society as a whole. Anyone who is willing to step up to their responsibility can be an authentic leader. Are you ready to step up to your responsibility? Are you ready to lead?

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

1. Be Yourself Many of us spend an enormous amount of energy being who we think other people want us to be. Authentic leadership requires that we know who we are and be it without fear or compromise in all situations. To know ourselves we must be able to articulate our core motivation and the values we live by. An authentic leader also needs to have their own authentic leadership philosophy. To articulate your own leadership philosophy think about: 1 - The time when you have worked at your very best - how were you being led?

2 - Your best experience of leadership? 3 - Your ‘hero’ leader Answer each question by noting down 4 or 5 key words. Arrange the words in order of priority for you. Take the top 5-7 key attributes and turn them into a sentence of around 20 words that also aligns with your core motivation and your values. This is your draft leadership philosophy. Live with it, work with it, test it and develop it until it feels easy for you.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

2. Empower One of the challenges with hierarchy is that responsibility devolves upwards so fast that, if you are a leader, it is easy to become overwhelmed. The authentic leader goes beyond simple delegation to empower people to define, decide and act with the absolute minimum of intervention or management. To empower means to give people permission to use their own judgement, their own taste, their own creativity to solve problems, take decisions and so on. If you recoil at the idea of trusting people, ask yourself this question:

Why would I hire/work with someone I do not trust? This is not a question of trusting everyone with everything. It is a question of understanding your people’s strengths and weaknesses and trusting them to do the things they are best at brilliantly. Create a safe environment where you can talk with people and discover their true strengths and weaknesses. Help people to build on their strengths and have others support their weaknesses. Tell them you trust them to do a great job.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

3.Meaning There are three ways to motivate people; carrot, stick and meaning. Carrot and stick work well if you are looking for people to do what you are telling them to do and not go far beyond.

People will only take responsibility and initiative if they personally believe in what they are doing. If the outcome of their labour is personally meaningful to them. There are three levels of meaning:

If you want people to take initiative, to take responsibility, to be creative neither carrot nor stick will work.

1 - Service to human society

If you want people to take responsibility, you will only succeed if you give them a sense of meaning or purpose. People will not take initiative or responsibility if they feel they are simply working to make someone else rich.

3 - Service to spirituality

2 - Service to the environment

The more the outcome of our work contributes the more meaningful you and others will find it. If you want people to be fully motivated offer them meaningful work.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

4. Alignment It is all very well for everyone in a workplace to have a sense of meaning, but if that meaning pulls people in different directions its value is limited.

A successful team purpose must deliver for every individual, for the team as a whole, for the organisation and for our wider society.

Part of the job of leadership is to find a way for everyone in the team to align what is personally meaningful for them with the outcome of their work, the work of the team and the work of the organisation as a whole.

A win, win, win, win.

This means enabling every member of the team to articulate their core motivation or life’s purpose and then helping them to work with other team members to articulate a team purpose

Sharing the team purpose is then a clear criteria for inclusion in the team. Those who are unable to align with the team purpose would be happier and more successful in a team or organisation that does share their purpose. Alignment is relevant for both recruitment and retention of team members.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

5. Safe Space The most important role of the leader is to maintain a safe space in which their team members can work. To feel empowered we need to believe that the goal posts will not move, that we will not be blamed. The job of the leader is to deal with issues as they arise in positive, supportive, learning and above all honest and transparent ways - without blame or criticism.

Instead all team members must be willing to take responsibility for both the ups and the downs. They must learn to celebrate the ups and and move on quickly from the downs. The culture that is created is one of shared responsibility and safety in which to experiment, explore, fail and succeed. The outcome will be break-throughs, creativity and brilliance.

The authentic leader must provide a reliable guarantee that individual team members will not get blamed for mistakes or failures. This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

6. Opportunity As well as a sense of personal and collective meaning we also need an honest sense of personal and team opportunity. We need to believe that one of the outcome of our work will be progress and improvement for us personally. The conditions for team opportunities need to be clear and transparent. When the conditions are met, the promised opportunity must be delivered promptly. The role of the authentic leader is to help team members articulate the opportunities available for each individual and for the team.

with and for each individual and with and for the team. Once the opportunities have been made clear, the role of the authentic leader is to coach and support each individual team member so that they are able to make the most of the opportunities on offer. This coaching can be done in any direction and can be explicit or discrete. If you have a boss who needs coaching to facilitate the progress of your team, it is the responsibility of the authentic leader to do that coaching. It is equally important to coach peers as well as those for whom you are formally responsible.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

7.Courage Authentic leadership does not need to be lonely, because everything can be co-created and responsibility can be shared. However, when times are tough, when things do not go according to plan, when others are criticising or blaming you or your team or your team members, real courage is required. There will be times where it is necessary to lead from the front. To stand firm or to be prepared to act on tough decisions. Your team need to know that when these times arrive you can be relied upon to behave with integrity, to stick

with to your values and leadership philosophy. To stay calm and spread calm and avoid panic. The only way to convince people that you have that kind of courage is to be that calm, strong, authentic leader at all times and especially in other and more minor situations. Alongside this the authentic leader will maintain a high level of transparent, relevant and honest communication in all situations - especially the tough ones. The only way to be that authentic leader is to practice being that authentic leader.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

8.Love What in the world is a word like ‘love’ doing in a leadership book? The reality is that love, is really the defining quality of the authentic leader. Love is the opposite of fear. There are three different types of fear - useful, limiting and someone else’s.

Think about it. The working relationships that work best, the customer relationships that work best, the personal relationships that work best are all the ones that go beyond the logical, obvious, transactional and into the undefinable, caring, trusting space of love. Love is the only long term motivator.

Useful fear helps us respect risky situations, the other two hold us back. The authentic leader will always act with love, even when the situation is frightening.

In order to stay motivated and committed to anything over the long term we must love to do it and we must love the outcomes it creates. Anything else is a compromise.

Relationships with love are the only ones that truly work.

Authentic leaders love their work, their people and the outcomes.

This e-book is written and offered by Neil Crofts - coach, consultant and author. For more information or to contact please visit www.authentictransformation.com Copyright © Neil Crofts 2008

What’s Next?

This ebook has been written by author, coach and consultant Neil Crofts. It is offered for free as a way of helping to enhance the level and quality of leadership in the world please feel free to pass it on to others or offer for download from your website or blog.

Neil has raced cars, started, run and sold businesses. He has also been a senior leader in a global corporation through growth and contraction.

If you find the ideas inspiring but are not sure how to implement them you may be interested in authentic leadership mentoring with Neil.

Neil has coached thousands of people to realise their life’s purpose and has worked to bring the benefits of authenticity to some of the largest and most inspiring organisations, including - Microsoft, MSN, Shell, Gambro, NPower, Howies, KaosPilots, Good Energy, Solar Century, Alastair Sawday Publishing, South Gloucestershire Council, NHS.

If you would like help to bring the benefits of authentic leadership to your organisation you may be interested in having Neil run a workshop or training event.

Neil has written two books on authentic business and a third on personal authenticity.

Contact Neil - [email protected] www.authentictransformation.co.uk