discover your true north
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Authenticity in Leadership & Life
Authenticity is the practice of being true to one's own personality, spirit, or character. Our authentic nature results from the stories that shape our lives, influencing our values, beliefs, leadership style, and approach to challenges. Embracing authenticity in leadership became prominent with Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor. He highlighted that embodying your core values and character is crucial for successful leadership, enhancing employee satisfaction and workplace happiness. His books, Authentic Leadership and Discover Your True North, guide these exercises to uncover and clarify your authentic self.
The first step lets you explore your life stories, identify your crucibles (intense experiences that shape your values), and understand their impact on your leadership style. Reflecting on these events helps you uncover your true north—your internal compass for leading with integrity and purpose.
Explore the Constructs of Authenticity
Bill George believes that authentic leadership is rooted in self-awareness and a deep understanding of one's life story. He emphasizes that true leaders derive strength and distinctiveness from understanding how personal experiences shape individual values and beliefs. By reflecting on pivotal turning points and crucible moments, individuals can discover their true north—an internal compass that guides them to lead with integrity and purpose. George's approach encourages leaders to embrace their authentic selves, fostering trust and genuine connections with others.
George’s concept of "True North" is about finding your authentic self and aligning your leadership with your core values and beliefs. It’s not merely about career success or external achievements; it’s about understanding who you are at your deepest level and what you stand for. Your true north is your fixed point in a spinning world that helps you stay on track as a leader.
One of the challenges in embracing authenticity is its mutable nature. As we journey through life, we continuously learn, grow, and add new chapters to our stories. Therefore, it’s important to intentionally revisit, examine, and renew who we are and what we authentically represent both inwardly and outwardly through our leadership.
Each exercise will introduce you to the core elements of the authentic self. Our journey begins with the crucibles—identifying the experiences that shape your character and style.
Step One: Understanding the Crucibles
Bill George believes that reflecting on your life’s journey allows you to understand the crucibles that have tested and shaped you. These experiences, often challenging and transformative, are critical in developing your true north. They provide insights into your strengths and weaknesses, helping you to lead with authenticity and integrity. Crucibles are the intense, often challenging experiences that shape your character and influence your path. George emphasizes that these crucibles are pivotal in understanding your true north. They are the moments that test your resolve, challenge your beliefs, and ultimately shape your identity.
Learning from Adversity: When faced with difficult situations, you are forced to confront your limitations and find ways to overcome them. These experiences build resilience and provide valuable lessons that shape your future actions. By reflecting on these moments, you can identify the core values and principles that emerged from them, which are essential in discovering your true north.
Transformative Experiences: Whether positive or negative, most leaders can point to moments that have had a profound impact on their development. These often serve as turning points that redirect one's path and redefine one's purpose. By acknowledging and understanding these experiences, one gains a deeper insight into one's motivations and aspirations. For example, a leader who has navigated a significant career change may develop a stronger sense of purpose and commitment to their new path. This clarity of vision, grounded in personal experience, enables them to lead with confidence and conviction.
Leading with Integrity and Purpose: Identifying your true north is not just about self-awareness; it’s about aligning your actions with your core values and leading with integrity and purpose. Authentic leaders are those who stay true to their principles, even in the face of adversity. They inspire trust and loyalty by being consistent and transparent in their actions.
Building Trust and Credibility: Leaders who have a clear understanding of their true north are better equipped to build trust and credibility with their teams. Their actions are guided by a consistent set of values, which fosters a sense of reliability and dependability. This trust is crucial in creating a positive and productive work environment.
Inspiring Others: When leaders lead with integrity and purpose, they inspire others to do the same. Their authenticity serves as a powerful example, encouraging their team members to align their actions with their own values and beliefs. This creates a culture of authenticity and integrity within the organization, leading to higher levels of engagement and performance.
Exercise One: Tell Your Stories - Find Your Crucibles - Clarify Their Impact
In this exercise, inspired by Bill George's teachings, you'll delve into significant life events, identify your crucibles, and uncover how they shape your leadership style and personal growth. Embrace this opportunity to explore your true north—your internal compass guiding you to lead with authenticity and purpose.
Step 1: Brain Dump Significant Life Events. The goal is to quickly list significant life events, both personal and professional. Some people like to list them out, and others like to use a timeline format -so do whatever serves you here. Set a timer for no more than five minutes. Write down any significant life event that comes to mind. Don’t need to overthink or get into the details (that part comes later).
Step 2: Select Key Events. The goal of this step is to identify from the list you generated the most impactful events on your list. Your context to the selection of these events is based on what you feel is influencing or driving where you are now in your life. What moments from your deep or recent past seem to be most influencing or relevant to where you are at this moment? Remember that authenticity is a mutable element of our inner self - and it’s possible that events that may have been impactful at one time aren’t in your current circumstances - and that’s okay.
Select from your list no more than five events that you think are most relevant or impactful to you today.
Then you can select no more than an additional three to five that you feel are relevant, but somehow less so than the first five you chose.
You should have no more than ten total events at the end of this step. Also, it’s okay if you have less than ten - we’re only creating the boundary max of ten so that you are focused on how your stories and experiences are shaping you today.
Step 3: Describe the top five events. The goal of this step is to reflect deeply on each of these events and articulate their significance and meaning to you today. And keep in mind that they are impacting you today may be different from how they impacted you previously - that’s perfectly normal and the important thing to keep in mind is what’s resonating with you today.
For each event, write a couple of paragraphs about the event, what happened, your reactions, and responses. Some also like to remember the details of that event like what you were wearing, or the weather, and sometimes what happened right before and right after the event.
Reflect on the impact - this is all about the emotions of the experience as well as the lessons learned and how this particular moment shaped/influenced your values, beliefs, and choices. The more you can share here, the better, as much of what we find in our authentic selves rests in the depths of the emotions and how we carry our stories in our hearts more than in our minds.
Step 4: Find the Crucibles. Recognize the intensity of the experience and how it shaped your character and leadership style. From those five events, select the top three that resonate strongly with your sense of self. Now we’re going to focus on how the experience tested and shaped you - what strengths did you discover, and did you find a new superpower? Did you emerge with a stronger sense of confidence, and how did that feel? Some find it helpful to describe it across the following attributes:
Intensity: Consider the strong emotions involved (e.g., fear, grief, joy).
Long-lasting Impact: Reflect on the lasting influence on your life.
Transformative Nature: Identify changes in perspective and identity.
Testing and Shaping: Understand how the experience tested and shaped you.
Next Steps
By working through these steps, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the experiences that have shaped you, the crucibles that have tested and transformed you, and their impact on your values, beliefs, and leadership style. This self-awareness is key to discovering your true north and leading with authenticity and purpose. Please bring your reflections to our next session, and we’ll map these discoveries to your evolving sense of authenticity.
Helpful Resources
It’s helpful read (listen) to Discover Your True North by Bill George. However, you don’t need to complete the book to complete this exercise. I’m providing a link to an HBR article and Podcast featuring Bill George and others - this will give you a great backdrop as we begin our journey. If you are not able to access this via the link, please let me know.
Articles:
Discovering Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George, Peter Sims, Andrew N. McLean, & Diana Mayer HBR February 2007 We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But we must first be willing to devote ourselves to our personal growth and development as leaders. An HBR classic article, recently re-published as a part of HBR’s 100-year celebration of its best works. Access Here
