ideas about authentic leadership. Longitudinal studies are not yet possible on how much he may have shaped lives and leadership, but anecdotal evidence points to encouraging results.
One group that has had lots of exposure to Bill and his work is students who have pursued joint degrees at HBS and HKS and in their third year have received scholarships from Bill and Penny George. These George Fellows, typically in their late twenties, have a home at our Center for Public Leadership and meet frequently, often with Bill and Penny. Bill generously mentors a number of them and remains close long after they have graduated. Altogether, the George Fellowship now has 100 alumni.
To be sure, many had transformative experiences that strengthened their leadership before they became George Fellows. Even so, their recent achievements have been impressive. Here are a few whom Bill continues to mentor: Seth Moulton won an upset victory in his campaign for Congress and has attracted a national following. Maura Sullivan is now serving as an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Administration. Nate Fick is CEO of Endgame as well as former CEO of the Center for a New American Security and author of One Bullet Away. Brian Elliott founded Friendfactor, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) nonprofit for straight people that has been pivotal in winning battles for gay rights. Rye Barcott is running a venture fund for solar installations in North Carolina; was selected as a Young Global Leader at Davos; and is author of It Happened on the Way to War. John Coleman is a principal of Invesco in Atlanta and coauthored How to Argue Like Jesus. Stephen Chan is chief of staff for the Boston Foundation. Peter Brooks works for a water technology company and directs the Warrior-Scholar Project. Jonathan Kelly runs a private equity company based in Singapore. And Claude Burton is directing marketing for a rapidly growing information technology firm in Brazil. Can there be any doubt that the ideas here apply to emerging leaders from every sector of life and across national boundaries?
As this book is being published, the world is slipping ever more deeply into a leadership crisis. For people everywhere, life is becoming ever more volatile and unpredictable. Instead of putting a firm hand on the wheel, many leaders seem unable to steer toward safe ports in the storm. A survey of global opinion the World Economic Forum published in 2015 found that 76 percent believe we have had a serious loss of leadership. Business leaders have recovered some of their ground lost since 2008–2009, but they rank only modestly above political leaders.
This book can perhaps help us find our way. If individual leaders can recognize when they have drifted away from True North and make successful course corrections, as Bill George argues, nations can as well. Surely, authentic leadership beats what we have now.
INTRODUCTION
Have you discovered your True North? Do you know what your life and your leadership are all about?
Leadership starts with being authentic, the genuine you. The purpose of Discover Your True North is to enable you to become the leader you want to be. In the process you will discover your True North – the internal compass that guides you successfully through life.
True North is your orienting point – your fixed point in a spinning world – that helps you stay on track as a leader. It is derived from your most deeply held beliefs, your values, and the principles you lead by. It is your internal compass, unique to you, that represents who you are at your deepest level.
Just as a compass needle points toward a magnetic pole, your True North pulls you toward the purpose of your leadership. When you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you. Although others may guide or influence you, your truth is derived from your life story. As Warren Bennis said, “You are the author of your life.”
Discovering your True North takes a lifetime of commitment and learning. As you are tested in the world, you yearn to look at yourself in the mirror and respect the person you see and the life you are leading. Some days will be better than others, but as long as you are true to who you are, you can cope with the most difficult circumstances life presents.
The world may have very different expectations for you than you have for yourself. Whether you are leading a small team or at the top of an organization, you will be pressured by external forces to respond to their needs and seduced by rewards for fulfilling those needs. These pressures and seductions may cause you to detour from your True North. When you get too far off course, your internal compass tells you something is wrong and you need to reorient yourself. It requires courage and resolve to resist the constant pressures and expectations confronting you and to take corrective action when necessary.
As CEO of Sara Lee Brenda Barnes said, “The most important thing about leadership is your character and the values that guide your life.” She added:
If you are guided by an internal compass that represents your character and values, you're going to be fine. Let your values guide your actions and don't ever lose your internal compass. Everything isn't black or white. There are a lot of gray areas in business.
When you discover your True North, you find coherence between your life story and your leadership. A century ago psychologist William James wrote:
I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which…he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!”
Can you recall a time when you felt most intensely alive and could say with confidence, “This is the real me”? Professionally, I had that feeling from the first time I walked into Medtronic in 1989 and joined a group of talented people dedicated to the mission to “alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life.” I felt I could be myself and be appreciated for who I was and what I could contribute. I sensed immediately that my values aligned with the organization's values.
When I wrote Authentic Leadership in 2003, the most common question I received was “What do you mean by authenticity?” To me, being authentic was the natural way of leading, but many people in that era of charismatic leaders considered leading authentically a new idea.
Today authenticity is seen as the gold standard for leadership. No longer is leadership about developing charisma, emulating other leaders, looking good externally, and acting in one's self-interest, as was so often the case in the late twentieth century. Nor should leadership be conflated with your leadership style, managerial skills, or competencies. These capabilities are very important, but they are the outward manifestation of who you are as a person. You cannot fake it to make it, because people sense intuitively whether you are genuine.
The hierarchical, directive leadership style so prevalent in the past century is fading fast in favor of today's collaborative leaders, who believe in distributed leadership at all levels. The old notion of leaders as the smartest guys in the room – as Enron CEO Jeff Skilling typified – has been replaced by leaders with high levels of emotional intelligence (EQ).
Because of this move toward greater authenticity, we are blessed with much higher caliber leaders today. In discovering their True North, they have committed to leading with purpose to make a difference in the world and leave behind lasting legacies. The quality of today's leaders is reflected in the lasting results they are achieving within their organizations.
For this all-new edition, my colleague Zach Clayton and I interviewed and studied 47 authentic leaders that represent the diversity of the new generation of global leaders – among them, Unilever's Paul Polman, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Alibaba's Jack Ma, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, Merck's Ken Frazier, and Sojourners' Jim Wallis.
Before
