Leadership should be about transformation and not just authenticity

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 25th of June 2014

Thanks for your discussion and I have something I want us to share on.

This week’s discussion has focused on the importance of authenticity of a leader but I think that while authentic leadership has some positive outcome, just being authentic will do little towards achieving set corporate goals.

Great leaders have the following in common: they have a vision to achieve large scale ideas that they dream of accomplishing, and they have the personal power to enact it (Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly, & Konopaske, 2012). For example, such business leaders as the late Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Phil Knight of Nike, and Sam Walton of Wal-Mart had strong visions of the future. They were able to transform their visions into reality, because they had acquired and used the necessary power to do so. Great leaders make things happen by utilizing personal power (Pfeffer, 2011).

If this is the case, what happens to an authentic leader that lacks the power and vision to transform an organization? Will the organization still be transformed by just authentic leadership? It is obvious from the above discussion that such possibility is actually impossible. As such, we I think the focus of any leadership should be on transforming the system and meeting set corporate goals, rather than just being “authentic.”

What do you think dear?

References

Gibson, J. L, Ivancevich, J. M., Donnelly, J. H., & Konopaske, R. (2012). Organizations: Behavior, structure, processes (14^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Pfeffer, J. (2011). Power: Why some people have it-and others don’t. New York, NY: HarperCollins.