Coaches and trainers like me constantly sing the praises of being authentic in your behavior as a leader. But I have found someone who claims that is not always the best approach.
Herminia Ibarra PhD is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School. Thinkers 50 ranks her among the top management thinkers in the world. An authority on leadership, she is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, a judge for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, one of Apolitica’s 100 most influential people in gender policy, a Fellow of the British Academy, the 2018 recipient of the Academy of Management’s Scholar-Practitioner Award for her research’s contribution to management practice and serves on the Governing Body of the London Business School. Ibarra is also the author of best-selling books including Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.
Her TED Talk “The Authenticity Paradox” gives one pause to think about how authenticity can be seen as doing things the way they worked in the past. And we know that in these fast-changing time yesterday’s solutions sometimes do not solve today’s problems.
Have a look for yourself and decide whether you have been resting on your laurels too much.
Herb