LEADERSHIP AUTHENTICITY

Why is leadership authenticity elusive?

Being a leader is a role we play. Authenticity is something else entirely.

Today, many leadership coaches and advisors are trying to condition their clients to be more ‘authentic.’ These clients simply nod their heads, but have no clue what that means.

Being authentic to oneself offers us freedom, beyond conditions and conditioning.

Authenticity is akin to beingness. In this state, we are like an unfettered majestic bird with unclipped wings, soaring high.

If we slow down, rest, stay present, calm our minds, and observe closely, we can come to the realisation that our true nature is way beyond our personality.

OUR CHILDHOOD

Children from all cultural backgrounds carry a degree of emotional wounding and bodily closure - a spiritual sense of loss, which few of us escape from until the end of our lives. In that precious moment when death comes calling, we no longer need our personality to save us.

All children slowly gain an inner sense of having fallen from a state of grace, losing contact with their primordial harmony and happiness, which rightfully belongs to them from birth.

This disconnection from essence and the greater cosmos arises from the turmoil of conflict.

A child enters the world without inner conflict, but as fear infiltrates, their once-unconflicted nature begins to change. As Jesus once professed, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom belongs to such as these.”

Their family of origin, their nurturing environment, and immediate society play pivotal roles in shaping their early ego structure, allowing the child to safeguard themselves and navigate the world.

CONDITIONING

A deeper examination of personality reveals that there are distinct traits exhibited by each and every armoured child, which are tied to the aspects of consciousness that were absent from the time of their conception until approximately seven years of age.

The Jesuit adage, "Give me a boy until he is seven and I will show you the man," underscores our ability to mould and condition our children.

The implicit belief that a child's early socialisation determines their future is vividly illustrated in the acclaimed BBC Up Series, which has chronicled the lives of fourteen British children through interviews at seven-year intervals since 1964, when they were just seven years old.

As bright young souls, we are more inclined toward love than fear, and we offer ourselves as emotional sacrifices to our parents, older siblings and others. Recently minted souls possess less inner conflict and fewer conditions than so-called ‘adults.’

Chloe Madanes, the former Director of the Program for the Prevention of School and Family Violence at the University of San Francisco, has shared with me her insights from her years of supervising trainee family therapists. She observed that in all cases of parental conflict, the child often exhibits behaviours intended to divert their parents from discord, sometimes even misbehaving to become the focal point of an altercation, thus shielding the vulnerable parent.

A child's strategies for handling conflicts—such as blaming, distracting, withdrawing, placating, and dominating—have been extensively studied in the realm of family therapy. Collectively, these behaviours contribute to the neurotic patterns that shape our personalities.

Here, I use the term "neurotic" deliberately because we all possess predictable ideas and behaviours that persist and influence our lives.

OUR MIDLIFE

In midlife, our souls often cry out from the suffering our conditioning has caused us. We long for freedom and an authentic way of being. Like the French Revolutionaries, we rally against the tyranny of our lives and start tragically to project hidden, hated and unacceptable aspects of our complex psyche onto others in our world; like parents, siblings, spouses, children and bosses.

The famous slogan of the French Revolution Liberté, égalité, fraternité – Liberty, equality, fraternity can echo within us. Deep down, we wished we had been born free, had remained free and that we enjoyed rights equal to others, rather than feeling persecuted by them.

IDENTITIES

Eventually, if we dare to scratch below the surface, most of the time, most of us, use our societally cultivated identity in ways that are mostly unconscious, automatic and spontaneous.

‘The Strategy Guy’ is an extension of my false-self or personality. As ‘The Strategy Guy’, I operate with ethics, intelligence, compassion and integrity; however it is a role that I play, some of the time, just like we all do in society. You may say I am a lawyer, a policewoman or a father. That is just a role you play, some of the time. Who you really are is not that. Who you really are, is always an authentic mystery!

As Bertrand Russell once wrote, "Every person, wherever they go, is enveloped by a cloud of reassuring convictions that accompany them like flies on a summer's day."

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