Donna Ladkin and Steven Taylor have written about a form of leadership that they’ve called, “Authentic Embodied Leadership.” While their work has meaning for all leaders it seems especially fitting for clergy leaders. The premise is simple: the leader’s ability to convey authenticity enhances the follower’s experience of the leader/led relationship. Although in the field of leadership studies no agreed upon definition exists as to when our leadership is authentic, Ladkin and Taylor have discovered three themes that run throughout. They are: a) authentic leadership is an expression of the leader’s true self; b) the leader must be aware of his or her self to express it authentically; and c) since the self is inclined toward virtue, authentic leadership is closely linked to moral leadership. However, leaders and followers may be equally as challenged to find the true self.
The difficulty is two-fold: For the leader it is to find the mechanisms that bring awareness of their self. For followers it is to discern when the leader is expressing his/her true self. What followers can see, however, is the leader’s body and how s/he uses it. It is upon this that follower’s perceptions are keyed. Though unable to know the inner thoughts of their leaders, follower’s awareness of them as knowing themselves and thus revealing through their body what is genuinely and truly self forms the basis of followership. In short, our bodies become the method by which our invisible intents are manifest and the follower’s perception of the leader’s authenticity founded.
For this embodied leadership to remain authentic to both leader and follower the leader must be aware, if not give expression, to what s/he actually feels. Doing so is to engage in the awareness of self that occurs between our bodily clues and the larger world’s affirmation of our identity, but how is that done? These two, our bodily clues and the world’s affirmation of our identity, are referred to as our somatic and symbolic states. The somatic holds the existence of a firm, stable, and fixed self as a matter of fact while the symbolic sees the self as constructed from the stories that comprise our living and created depending upon the context. In the somatic view the sense of self can be thought of as grounded in our bodily reactions. This can be, among others, an inner sense about a decision; a “feeling” that arises in our emotions or that is felt in our body. If listened to it takes us closer to the “real” us. In the symbolic view others validate our real self by their response to our actions as we interact with them through language and gesture. In effect, the world tells us who we are.
So which is it? In reality it’s both. Because our self changes as we learn and age, we use both clues to determine our real self at a given point in time. Rigorous self-examination isn’t needed but awareness of what our inner clues tell us about ourselves and what others affirm about us are. This embodied leadership will enable us to lead authentically and followers realize the stability that authenticity brings.
Ladkin, D., Taylor, S. (2010). Enacting the ‘true self’: Towards a theory of embodied authentic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 21:64-74.
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