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- Wiley
More About This Title The Art of Authenticity: Tools to Become an Authentic Leader and Your Best Self
English
The Art of Authenticity is a guide to becoming a better leader by achieving your best self. All people bring different sides of themselves to various situations. This book will show you how to broaden and deepen your effectiveness by presenting the most appropriate side of yourself. Dr. Karissa Thacker is the management psychologist called on by over two hundred Fortune 500 companies to work with high potential leaders. This book provides you with her expert guidance, based on validated psychological research and artful application of psychological principles to actual business situations, to help you become an authentic leader. You'll learn how to lead through reflection, action, and conscious choice, and how to maintain your guiding principles while effectively leading your team. By replacing habitual reactions with authentic ones, you'll find that you're modeling good behavior and effective decision-making—and that authenticity is contagious. This guide equips you with the tools and skills you need to be the catalyst of positive change your organization needs.
How do you remain authentic while being an effective leader? This book argues that the question isn't a duality. Authenticity is the best way to lead, and the only way to maintain sustainable success as an organization. This insightful guide shows you how to find your authentic self, and leverage that into an effective, executable leadership strategy.
- Become authentic in a way that befits your values
- Show loyalty, honesty, ethics, and consideration
- Maintain authenticity in leadership roles
- Make conscious choices instead of blind reactions
Some are born to lead, other must be taught, but all leaders must work to retain their own values and basic sense of self. A simple pause can mean the difference between a knee-jerk reaction and an authentic decision, and the effects ripple throughout your organization. The Art of Authenticity is your guidebook to finding the true authentic leader within, and leading from the inside out for the long haul.
English
Karissa Thacker is the founder and president of Strategic Performance Solutions, Inc., a management-consulting firm focused on creating innovative solutions in the space of human performance and satisfaction at work. She is a widely respected management psychologist who has served as a consultant for over 200 Fortune 500 companies including UPS, Best Buy, and AT&T. She also serves as adjunct faculty at the Lerner School of Business at the University of Delaware.
English
PREFACE xi
Part I A New Vision of Authenticity 1
Chapter 1 The Digital Era of Freedom and Fear 3
The Call to Authenticity 4
On Becoming More Authentic 5
The Particular Challenges of Now and How Did We Get Here? 8
The Dawn of the Digital Age 11
Digital Era = Fear + Freedom 14
Responding to the Challenges of Freedom and Fear 15
The Workouts 16
Chapter 2 Signature Contributions vs. Conformity 18
Celebrate Your Quirks 20
The More Experiments the Better 22
The Upside of Your Weaknesses 25
Meaning Matters 28
The Workouts 32
Chapter 3 Truth, Lies, and Authenticity 33
Seeing the Multiple Choice Questions 34
Killing the Dead Bug View of Truth 35
Big Fat Whoppers and Sweet Little Lies 40
The Truth About Authenticity 44
The Workouts 46
Part II The Science of Authenticity 49
Chapter 4 Followers Beware . . . of Charisma 51
The Perceived Power of Charisma 52
Two Flavors of Charisma 55
Conversations That Matter 58
The Authenticity Continuum 67
The Workouts 68
Chapter 5 Self-Awareness or Is It Selves Awareness? 70
Selves Awareness and the Case of the Bossy CFO 71
Are You a Chameleon? 74
Fixed Traits, Free Traits, and Real People 78
The Ideal Self, the Current Self, and Lots in Between 81
The Workouts 83
Chapter 6 Balanced Processing and Collaborative Decision Making 85
What Is Balanced Processing? 86
Get in Balanced Processing Gear or Not 89
Three Tricky Words for Leaders 91
Hire a Brilliant Antagonist or Three 93
Know and Own All Your Biases 95
Have a Big Ego and Put It on the Shelf 99
The Workouts 101
Chapter 7 Relational Transparency and Honest Conversations 102
The Value of Honest Conversation 104
Transparency That Creates Business Results 105
Emotional Transparency Matters, Too 107
The Myth of Total Transparency 109
The Age of Transparency 111
General Practical Rules of the Transparency Road 113
The Challenge of Transparency 116
The Workouts 117
Chapter 8 Internalized Moral Perspective/An Active, Unique GPS System 118
Prisons, Orderly Stages, and Elephants 122
Putting Up Psychological Guardrails 129
The One Thing 131
The Workouts 132
Part III The Master Class 133
Chapter 9 The Centrality of Conscious Choice 135
Debunking Popeye’s Version of Authenticity 137
The Reality of Authenticity 139
Choosing Authentic Action 140
Choose to Experiment 142
Choose to Notice the Novel 144
In Closing 146
The Workouts 147
Chapter 10 How to Read Culture Like an Anthropologist 149
Practical Anthropology Via iPhone 150
Is the Organization Working to Be More Authentic? 154
Figuring Out Fit 155
The Mind-Set of a Corporate Anthropologist 157
The Workouts 164
Chapter 11 How to Make Peace with Paradox 166
Who Are You (Really)? 171
Three Selves That Won’t Magically Align 173
Authentic Leadership Is a State of Mind 175
The Workouts 180
Chapter 12 How to Ferociously Seek the Truth (When Everyone Is Framing and Spinning) 182
The Truth Serum Question 184
The Trust Meter Is Always Running 188
In Search of a Virtue Buzz 192
Self-Defining Moments 197
The Workouts 198
Conclusion 199
NOTES 201
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 209
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 211
INDEX 213
