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Discovering Your Authentic Leadership
Bill George, the former chairman and
CEO of Medtronic, is a professor of
management practice at Harvard Busi-
ness School in Boston. Peter Sims es-
tablished “Leadership Perspectives,” a
class on leadership development at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business
in California. Andrew N. McLean is a
research associate at Harvard Business
School. Diana Mayer is a former Citi-
group executive in New York. This arti- from other leaders and academics. The result-
cle was adapted from True North:
Discover Your Authentic Leadership by
Bill George with Peter Sims (Jossey-
Bass, forthcoming in March 2007).
harvard business review • hbr.org • february 2007
and honestly how they realized their potential
and candidly shared their life stories, personal
struggles, failures, and triumphs.
The people we talked with ranged in age
from 23 to 93, with no fewer than 15 per de-
cade. They were chosen based on their reputa-
tions for authenticity and effectiveness as
leaders, as well as our personal knowledge
of them. We also solicited recommendations
ing group includes women and men from a di-
verse array of racial, religious, and socioeco-
nomic backgrounds and nationalities. Half of
them are CEOs, and the other half comprises
a range of profit and nonprofit leaders, midca-
reer leaders, and young leaders just starting
on their journeys.
After interviewing these individuals, we be-
lieve we understand why more than 1,000 stud-
ies have not produced a profile of an ideal
leader. Analyzing 3,000 pages of transcripts,
our team was startled to see that these people
did not identify any universal characteristics,
traits, skills, or styles that led to their success. ences, and through it, you can find the inspira-
Rather, their leadership emerged from their
life stories. Consciously and subconsciously,
they were constantly testing themselves through
real-world experiences and reframing their life
stories to understand who they were at their
core. In doing so, they discovered the purpose
of their leadership and learned that being au-
thentic made them more effective.
These findings are extremely encouraging:
You do not have to be born with specific char-
acteristics or traits of a leader. You do not have
to wait for a tap on the shoulder. You do not
have to be at the top of your organization. In-
stead, you can discover your potential right
now. As one of our interviewees, Young &
Rubicam chairman and CEO Ann Fudge, said,
“All of us have the spark of leadership in us,
whether it is in business, in government, or
as a nonprofit volunteer. The challenge is to
understand ourselves well enough to discover
where we can use our leadership gifts to
serve others.”
Discovering your authentic leadership re-
quires a commitment to developing yourself.
Like musicians and athletes, you must devote
yourself to a lifetime of realizing your poten-
tial. Most people Kroger CEO David Dillon has
seen become good leaders were self-taught.
Dillon said, “The advice I give to individuals in
our company is not to expect the company to
Purchased by Ken Hampian (kchampian@charter.net) on March 15, 2013
hand you a development plan. You need to
take responsibility for developing yourself.”
In the following pages, we draw upon les-
sons from our interviews to describe how peo-
ple become authentic leaders. First and most
important, they frame their life stories in ways
that allow them to see themselves not as pas-
sive observers of their lives but rather as indi-
viduals who can develop self-awareness from
their experiences. Authentic leaders act on
that awareness by practicing their values and
principles, sometimes at substantial risk to
themselves. They are careful to balance their
motivations so that they are driven by these
inner values as much as by a desire for external
rewards or recognition. Authentic leaders also
keep a strong support team around them, en-
suring that they live integrated, grounded lives.
Learning from Your Life Story
The journey to authentic leadership begins
with understanding the story of your life. Your
life story provides the context for your experi-
tion to make an impact in the world. As the
novelist John Barth once wrote, “The story of
your life is not your life. It is your story.” In
other words, it is your personal narrative that
matters, not the mere facts of your life. Your
life narrative is like a permanent recording
playing in your head. Over and over, you re-
play the events and personal interactions that
are important to your life, attempting to make
sense of them to find your place in the world.
While the life stories of authentic leaders
cover the full spectrum of experiences—
including the positive impact of parents, ath-
letic coaches, teachers, and mentors—many
leaders reported that their motivation came
from a difficult experience in their lives. They
described the transformative effects of the loss
of a job; personal illness; the untimely death of
a close friend or relative; and feelings of being
excluded, discriminated against, and rejected
by peers. Rather than seeing themselves as vic-
tims, though, authentic leaders used these for-
mative experiences to give meaning to their
lives. They reframed these events to rise above
their challenges and to discover their passion
to lead.
Let’s focus now on one leader in particular,
Novartis chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella,
whose life story was one of the most difficult of
all the people we interviewed. He emerged
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