The Seven Capacities for Leadership: A Deep Dive into Authenticity
At Positive Leadership, we talk about the seven capacities of leadership: authenticity, purpose, advocacy, resilience, community building, reason, and gratitude. These capacities are crucial for effective leadership, but before we delve into them, let’s clarify what we mean by leadership.
People can get very confused about what leadership means. We define it as the activity of engaging oneself and others to align the factors that are necessary for us to thrive. That’s what we think of as leadership. These seven capacities are what allow us to do that.
So what do we mean when we talk about a capacity? A capacity is the same as a potential. The seven capacities of leadership are seven areas that increase someone’s social force. Social force doesn’t mean forcing someone to do something — it’s a force as in something that acts on something else. Gravity is a physical force — something that acts on physical objects. Social force is something that acts on social objects — people.
Having more social force means you have more influence. When someone has more social force, they may be able to motivate people more than others or get them to engage in certain ways.
We all have these seven capacities within us to varying degrees. You may have more or you may have less. The amazing thing is you can practice and grow in all seven. There are exercises that will enable you to develop each capacity to a greater degree.
And these capacities naturally interrelate and feed each other. When they are combined there are synergies that lead to increased benefits. If we increase our capacities in all seven of them, we will see a major increase in our ability to lead others.
The Impact of the Seven Capacities on Organizational Culture
The power of these seven capacities is that they have a transformative effect on an organization’s culture. Think of these seven capacities as values. When you foster these values in individuals, in their interactions, and in the products of teams and individuals, you see a dramatically positive effect.
Fostering the value of authenticity, having people be more true to themselves, has a significant impact on an organization. People feel more committed to a place where they are valued and appreciated for who they really are.
Purpose brings clear benefits. When everybody is clearer individually on the purpose of their role, and teams are more aligned on the purpose of their projects, the organization becomes more focused and effective.
A sense of community has a dramatic impact on an organization. When we treat each other as community members, rather than just as people we have to associate with from 9 to 5, the entire workplace dynamic shifts positively.
Reason enhances clarity and effectiveness. When everyone is clear on what they’re doing, what the reality is, and what consequences their actions have, we address the problems that are really happening because we’re in touch with the world as it truly is.
And perhaps most transformative of all is gratitude. A culture that truly cultivates this capacity recognizes the impact we have on each other and fosters appreciation for the benefits we provide one another.
These concepts have proven themselves as extremely valuable and necessary to human thriving. That’s why we’ve selected them, and why we’re looking for ways to really use them in our communities and organizations.
Introduction to Authenticity
In this article, we’ll focus on the first of these seven capacities: authenticity. Authenticity is about being your true self — what you project outside of yourself reflects who you truly are on the inside.
When someone is authentic, it is something we can sense — it’s visceral. And when people sense someone is being authentic they are more likely to trust and listen to them. When we are authentic, it also makes it easier for those around us to act authentically as well. This makes authenticity a potent leadership capacity.
The Four Rooms of Authenticity
To act with authenticity, you have to first know who you truly are. You have to know who your true self is. You have to spend time looking inward to know who you really are. “Who is my true self?” is a deep question with many layers. It involves separating out the external influences that accumulate over our lives from our core, true self. We have a process that we encourage people to go through to help answer this question — we call it the four rooms of authenticity.
The first room is self-awareness. In this room, there are activities that help someone understand who they are, how they operate, what they think. We all have many thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, but if you pay attention, they follow pretty consistent patterns that make up your personality — how you generally respond in different situations.
The next room is self-acceptance. Acceptance means to embrace the truth of both your limitations and the areas where you excel — and then also having a commitment to developing yourself further.
That leads to the third room of authenticity, self-development. In this room, we identify a focus area that we would like to develop and we’re committed to.
Developing oneself is an internal process, after that we want to take it outward and have an impact in the world. That leads us to the fourth room, self-assertion. In this room, we’re actually seeing how we can take what’s truly authentic inside of us and bring it out into the world, see how it reacts. Seeing how effective we can be at bringing about the desired set of outcomes would be a measure of one’s ability in the activity of leadership.
The Importance of Authenticity
The consequences of inauthenticity are profound. Ancient wisdom, such as Socrates’ assertion that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” underscores the importance of authenticity. Modern research supports this, with studies on deathbed regrets consistently showing that not being true to oneself is a common source of remorse.
Henry David Thoreau described how the mass of people “lead lives of quiet desperation.” Quiet desperation is the opposite of authenticity. It’s when you want to be authentic, but you can’t. While “desperation” might not be a word we would use today, it conveys anxiety, which is more common in our current vocabulary. Many psychologists would say that one of the main sources of mental unwellness is a lack of authenticity. People are somehow stifled from living their true life, and then things come out in other ways. The danger of this is that you’re not going to be able to lead effectively. You can’t even lead your own life authentically.
Meditation is closely tied to the journey towards authenticity. While there are many Americanized versions of meditation, true meditation is about reversing our usual outward perspective and deliberately looking inward. This inward journey is essential for authenticity.
Another approach to uncovering one’s authentic self is through a process of elimination, identifying what one is not. By recognizing what doesn’t constitute our true selves, we can begin to uncover our authentic nature.
Challenges to Authenticity
When examining authenticity, it’s important to consider what causes its absence. The process of enculturation plays a significant role. From an early age, individuals receive messages about how to behave and who to be, often before language is even acquired. This socialization creates what we commonly refer to as ‘personality.’
Interestingly, the word ‘personality’ originates from ‘persona,’ which in Greek theater referred to the mask an actor would wear on stage. This etymology suggests that our personality can be viewed as a kind of social mask we wear.
Authenticity and Leadership
Authenticity is crucial for leadership. How can we have people making decisions for large groups of people if they haven’t really gotten in touch with their own personhood, their own humanity? If you can’t live your own life authentically, it’s challenging to lead a larger community.
Conclusion
Authenticity forms the foundation of effective leadership. It enables us to connect genuinely with others, make decisions aligned with our true values, and inspire trust in those we lead. As we cultivate authenticity, we not only enhance our personal well-being but also strengthen our capacity to guide and influence others positively.
In our upcoming articles, we’ll explore the remaining six capacities and how they work together to create powerful, positive leadership. Each capacity builds upon the others, creating a comprehensive approach to leadership that can transform individuals, organizations, and communities.
