Authentic Leadership

The Authentic Leadership approach encourages students to live in their truth.

Built on an ethical foundation, authentic leadership emphasizes a leader’s development through their understanding of self and the honest relationships they cultivate with others. 

There are four core components of authentic leadership: 

• Self-awareness: one’s ability to understand their inner and outer qualities and how they relate to their leadership.  
• Internalized moral perspective: one’s ability to do the ‘right thing.’ Moral perspective is crucial in leadership development as it is a self-regulated and self-imposed behavior.  
• Balanced processing: the ability to put the mission and goals of the organization ahead of their own self-interest.  
• Relational transparency: being honest and straight forward in dealing with others.  

Overall, authentic leadership encourages students to be self-reflective and self-aware while having the courage to do what is right.  

Transformational Leadership  

Transformational leaders build trust.

Transformational leaders are able to persuade their followers to step out of their comfort zones, take a leap of faith and follow their leaders into the unknown. 

There are four core components of transformational leadership: 

• Idealized influence: serving as a example of excellence and character, and creating a climate of high standards for task performance and ethical choices.  
• Inspirational motivation: developing and communicating an ambitious, exciting and morally good vision for the group to achieve; involving followers, empowering them, and encouraging their development toward that end.
• Intellectual stimulation: fostering open discussion of the vision and its implementation.
• Individualized consideration: demonstrating genuine concern for followers' development; providing coaching and mentoring. 

Behavior of Authentic Transformational Leaders  

By demonstrating ethical behavior and personal character, authentic transformational leaders accomplish the most impressive of leadership challenges.  They lead their followers through risk taking, personal development and organizational change.