Learn how authentic leadership practices can accelerate your culture, build psychological safety and trust, and markedly improve employee retention rates.
Defining Authentic Leadership and Its Impact on the Workplace
Authentic leadership is an approach to leadership where we lead by showing genuine care for others, transparently sharing information and how decisions are made, as well as directing others through our values and those of our organization. Through acting authentically, we're leading in alignment with our own values and beliefs, as well as the culture of our organization, while also encouraging others to do the same. Authentic leaders are adept at connecting what matters to each person to the larger mission of a team and organization. If I go back to the experiences that most nurtured my development and my loyalty to a leader or organization, I can see the connection to authentic leadership. Leading authentically (perhaps loosely taking from my own experience and key learnings over the years) could mean —
- A peer helps someone troubleshoot a mistake or challenge by applying both technical expertise as well as the organization's core values.
- A senior leader opens a stressful meeting about a critical error with a very generous amount of jokes and friendly conversation before getting to the topic at hand.
- Leaders establish a regular cadence for both when and how information is communicated and discussed, creating a greater sense of confidence and control for all employees.
- Leaders equally celebrate wins and candidly debrief setbacks, and in so doing create an expectation for open communication and building an environment of trust and safety for sharing anything that affects the team, performance, and results.
Not surprisingly, through fostering an environment of honesty and integrity and nurturing everyone's unique individual differences, authentic leaders create a workplace atmosphere that is conducive to retention, performance, and well-being. Given how much time we spend at work, the ability to share our true personality, beliefs, and preferences alleviates stress and creates psychological safety. The ability for leaders to guide their teams authentically and for employees to feel comfortable being themselves is still not a given. Recent employee perception data reveals that —
- Nearly half of employees don't feel comfortable revealing their authentic self at work, and
- Almost 80 percent of employees feel discouraged from discussing topics and concerns that are important to them.
While most leaders set out with intentions and strive to lead authentically and create open and encouraging environments, a huge barrier to leading authentically is a lack of self-awareness. While most of us believe we are aware of our strengths, vulnerabilities, and how we're perceived by others, close to a third of employees report working with at least one leader who lacks self-awareness.
If we can remove these barriers, our teams will be more committed and the team as well as the organization benefit from lower turnover and employee retention, greater trust, and more fluid and positive relationships.
The impact of authentic leadership also extends well beyond simply employee satisfaction. Higher levels of trust, greater innovation and creativity, and improved team performance are just a few of the impacts it has on a team. When leaders are authentic they inspire trust; which is the core conduit of effective team dynamics and collaboration. Employees are more likely to take risks and be innovative when they feel supported by an authentic leadership framework, driving the organization toward success. With continually evolving technology and the how of work changing for most industries, employee decision-making and innovation are becoming a competitive key. In this way, leaders acting from a place of transparency, empathy, and overall authenticity will set the groundwork for their teams to excel.
Leading Authentically: a Driver of Retention and Empowerment
Let's talk through the mechanisms through which authentic action drives retention and even performance. It's fairly clear that genuine and transparent leadership is the cornerstone of enhancing loyalty, or the strong feeling of connection and support we feel when we know a person or organization is behind us. Loyalty happens when we feel a bond with a person or organization that shares our values or consistently acts with our best interests at heart.
An insightful exercise for leadership and culture development is to ask participants to share an organization to which they feel loyalty and why. You can kick off the discussion with an example like your favorite local coffee shop (or Starbucks), car repair place, or any company that consistently delivers on its intended mission for you. After participants share examples of organizations to which they feel loyalty, you can have interesting conversations about how the delivery of the local FedEx or urgent care can be adopted by your teams.
And every leader would be wise to focus on the mechanisms through which we earn loyalty. Employee attitude data shows a period of markedly low employee loyalty. As a recent study pointed out, more employees are considering leaving their current employment within the next year than during the Great Resignation. Mastering the mechanisms for increasing employee retention and loyalty is more salient now than ever.
We can see how each of the components of authentic leadership is positive; how can we know the focus on clear direction between values, words, and actions is the right focus? Findings in high-turnover industries, like nursing and hospitality, suggest that authenticity may drive retention and results through empowerment. Broadly speaking, we're empowered when we receive decision-making authority, or the power to execute a task, as well as greater confidence in our actions and abilities that usually follows. When we're empowered we're given greater autonomy, more influence, and independence.
In this vein, researchers discovered that authentic nursing leaders increased the degree to which early career nurses felt empowered. They had greater decision-making authority as well as confidence. Empowerment was significantly linked to lower exhaustion, burnout, and strain for early career nurses. The authentic behaviors of nurse leaders statistically affected these outcomes through empowerment.
The Relationship Between Authentic Leadership and Employee Well-being
The relationship between authentic leadership and employee well-being is significant and multifaceted. Authentic leaders prioritize the mental and emotional health of their employees as much as their professional development. By creating an open environment, and providing individualized support for employees, these leaders encourage employees to speak up about their challenges, both personal and professional, without fear of judgment or reprisal.
This supportive climate helps employees manage stress and promotes a healthier flow between our work and non-work spheres, which is crucial for long-term well-being. Furthermore, the genuine concern demonstrated by authentic leaders can lead to stronger relationships within the workplace, providing employees with a sense of community and belonging.
As we start to focus support on Generation Z and Alpha employees as the former continues through the beginning of their careers, and Alpha is just beginning in the workforce, the focus on community and belonging as a driver of retention and performance will only increase. This recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the importance Gen Z is placing on human connection, and even friendships, in early employment.
The well-being benefits of leading through authenticity, care, and open communication, don't stop at just our teams. Leaders themselves also reap health and well-being benefits from both striving to lead authentically as well as working within an organization that nurtures this approach to leading. Researchers looked at the day-to-day activities of authentic leaders and their health and well-being on a moment-to-moment basis. The disciplines of authentic leadership support well-being by reducing mental depletion: the sense of mental fatigue, apathy, and even cynicism that can gradually accumulate over time. Moreover, they found that these gains are contingent on the extent to which leaders interact with their teams: authentic leaders deplete less the more they interact, while inauthentic leaders deplete less with decreasing follower interaction.
Technology and Authenticity
Talking about authenticity without mentioning technology and how it continues to transform how we work and collaborate seemed like not addressing the elephant in the room. As I was reading and thinking about authenticity and relationships, I discovered Sherry Turkle's book, Alone Together. She unpacks, across our human journey, how technology shifts, and perhaps even warps, not just our experience of human relationships, but our relationship with ourselves.
While tech gives us always-on connection and the ability to reach out to others at any time, there's a cost. Both in the workplace and beyond, we may be asking for more than we should from technology. Across industries, I've heard conversations about leaders texting, emailing, or using a team communication technology, when a thoughtful one-on-one conversation was needed. The ability to tackle difficult conversations and consistently deliver constructive feedback and coaching is among the greatestIt's not only that we have less face-to-face communication and conversation, but that it's transformed from what it was twenty, and even ten, short years ago.
Of course, technology influences every aspect of the human experience, from cradle to grave: increasing our social connection with robots, AI, and computers. Childhood play, education, and our first relationships and experiences working collaboratively as young people are all influenced. Is there a cost? Does it affect our potential for empathy? We may have an answer: from 1980 to 2009, researchers have documented a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students. Workplace researchers find similarly alarming declines in our self-awareness and emotional intelligence. The cause may come down to how we forge and nurture our relationships. In short, we're delighted to use technology to reduce face-to-face communication. Technology removes what's difficult about conversation: it's in real-time, spontaneous, often messy, and we lack control. As Turkle puts it, this may drive us "to ask less of each other...less empathy, less attention, and less care from human beings." We each enter a team, organization, or relationship with unique expectations of what it means to show up, connect, and contribute. This means it's harder and takes something bigger than us to build shared expectations, safety, and trust.
A Culture of Trust and Open Communication
Culture or shared beliefs about what we're seeking to achieve and how we should reach those goals together can be what teaches, encourages, and establishes a commitment to authentic leadership. Specifically, the expectations of authentic leaders can build cultures that focus on trust and open communication as the core outcomes. When leaders are transparent about their decisions and open to feedback (and deliver that consistently), it sets a standard for communication that permeates the entire workforce. Leader-driven openness encourages employees to share their ideas and concerns, leading to the reduced strain we just talked about, greater collaboration and innovation, and feelings of safety and a sense of belonging.
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Trust is built when employees feel that their leaders are consistent and fair, and support their best interests, even as we're thrown unexpected obstacles and weather change. Authentic leaders who demonstrate these qualities can effectively break down hierarchical barriers, creating a more inclusive and idea-rich work environment. This trust-based culture improves employee engagement and enhances organizational resilience in the face of change and challenges.
Measuring the Success of Authentic Leadership Practices on Employee Retention
With an understanding of the clusters of behaviors that help us lead authentically, you might ask how you can measure and track progress on the path to authenticity. To measure the success of leadership practices on employee retention, we can track turnover rates, employee satisfaction scores, and even feedback from exit interviews, in addition to retention over time. Lower turnover, higher rates of promotion, and greater tenure, in departments that have focused on authentic leadership can be a strong indicator of the positive effect of these practices. Additionally, regular employee surveys can provide insights into how valued and supported employees feel, which is directly related to their likelihood of staying with the company.
While exit interviews offer a valuable opportunity to understand why employees leave and to gauge how more authentic leadership could have reversed the course of their decision, it's a lagging indicator. 360-degree performance feedback, and employee feedback mechanisms, allow you to capture opportunities to act before it's too late. You're also investing in your current team and the act of gathering feedback (facepalm mistakes notwithstanding) inherently builds authenticity. Whether you're looking at a small group or all leaders in a large organization, you can identify strengths, vulnerabilities, and even blind spots and build targeted strategies to further enhance authentic leadership capabilities and improve employee retention.
Bringing Authentic Leadership to the Forefront of Your Organization and Culture
Developing authentic leadership within an organization starts with a commitment, whether across the organization or at an individual level, to empathy, communication, and self-awareness. For the greatest change, these ways of leading should be threaded into the culture as what's expected. These expectations can include engaging in regular self-reflection and seeking feedback from others to understand their strengths and areas for improvement. Leadership training, both new and recurrent, can develop the disciplines of transparency, empathy, and ethical decision-making and can provide the consistent nudges and support needed to embed authenticity and genuine leadership within your culture. While not in a formal leadership role, everyone takes on the responsibility of leadership and influence. Authentic leadership can be communicated to potential and current, employees as the standard of care, transparency, and consistency they can expect.
Mentoring, for both leaders and individual contributors, can begin to teach and deepen authentic leadership throughout your culture. Through these relationships, high-potential employees and emerging leaders can learn the importance of vulnerability, transparency, and ethical leadership in action. Additionally, organizations can reinforce authentic leadership by recognizing and rewarding leaders who demonstrate these qualities, as well as aligning promotion criteria with the principles of authenticity. Mentorship programs for individual contributors can provide a schedule and a system of accountability to encourage leaders to build authentic relationships with their teams.
Need further assistance in kickstarting the development of authentic leadership within your organization? How would codifying the principles of leading authentically, like transparency and empathy, in your culture, job descriptions, and feedback mechanisms elevate your teams? What realistic changes would remove barriers to authenticity for your leadership teams? Our solutions cut across the employee journey and experience. Subscribe below for additional tools and ideas for connecting leadership to your culture and vision.
