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Discovering Your Authentic Leadership
When the 75 members of a rising stock price. Often their drive enables
Stanford Graduate them to be professionally successful for a while,
School of Business’s but they are unable to sustain that success. As
Advisory Council were they age, they may find something is missing
asked to recommend the in their lives and realize they are holding back
most important from being the person they want to be. Know-
capability for leaders to ing their authentic selves requires the courage
develop, their answer and honesty to open up and examine their ex-
was nearly unanimous: periences. As they do so, leaders become more
self-awareness. humane and willing to be vulnerable.
Of all the leaders we interviewed, David
Pottruck, former CEO of Charles Schwab, had
one of the most persistent journeys to self-
awareness. An all-league football player in
high school, Pottruck became MVP of his col-
lege team at the University of Pennsylvania.
After completing his MBA at Wharton and a
stint with Citigroup, he joined Charles Schwab
as head of marketing, moving from New York
to San Francisco. An extremely hard worker,
Pottruck could not understand why his new
colleagues resented the long hours he put in
and his aggressiveness in pushing for results. “I
thought my accomplishments would speak for
themselves,” he said. “It never occurred to me
that my level of energy would intimidate and
offend other people, because in my mind I was
trying to help the company.”
Pottruck was shocked when his boss told
him, “Dave, your colleagues do not trust you.”
As he recalled, “That feedback was like a dag-
ger to my heart. I was in denial, as I didn’t
see myself as others saw me. I became a light-
ning rod for friction, but I had no idea how self- testing them under fire enables you to develop
serving I looked to other people. Still, some-
where in my inner core the feedback resonated
as true.” Pottruck realized that he could not
succeed unless he identified and overcame his
blind spots.
Denial can be the greatest hurdle that lead-
ers face in becoming self-aware. They all have
egos that need to be stroked, insecurities that
need to be smoothed, fears that need to be al-
layed. Authentic leaders realize that they have
to be willing to listen to feedback—especially
the kind they don’t want to hear. It was only
after his second divorce that Pottruck finally
was able to acknowledge that he still had large
blind spots: “After my second marriage fell
apart, I thought I had a wife-selection prob-
lem.” Then he worked with a counselor who
delivered some hard truths: “The good news is
you do not have a wife-selection problem;
the bad news is you have a husband-behavior
harvard business review • hbr.org • february 2007
Purchased by Ken Hampian (kchampian@charter.net) on March 15, 2013
problem.” Pottruck then made a determined
effort to change. As he described it, “I was like
a guy who has had three heart attacks and fi-
nally realizes he has to quit smoking and lose
some weight.”
These days Pottruck is happily remarried
and listens carefully when his wife offers con-
structive feedback. He acknowledges that he
falls back on his old habits at times, particu-
larly in high stress situations, but now he has
developed ways of coping with stress. “I have
had enough success in life to have that founda-
tion of self-respect, so I can take the criticism
and not deny it. I have finally learned to toler-
ate my failures and disappointments and not
beat myself up.”
Practicing Your Values and
Principles
The values that form the basis for authentic
leadership are derived from your beliefs and
convictions, but you will not know what your
true values are until they are tested under
pressure. It is relatively easy to list your values
and to live by them when things are going
well. When your success, your career, or even
your life hangs in the balance, you learn what
is most important, what you are prepared to
sacrifice, and what trade-offs you are willing
to make.
Leadership principles are values translated
into action. Having a solid base of values and
the principles you will use in leading. For ex-
ample, a value such as “concern for others”
might be translated into a leadership principle
such as “create a work environment where
people are respected for their contributions,
provided job security, and allowed to fulfill
their potential.”
Consider Jon Huntsman, the founder and
chairman of Huntsman Corporation. His moral
values were deeply challenged when he worked
for the Nixon administration in 1972, shortly
before Watergate. After a brief stint in the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
(HEW), he took a job under H.R. Haldeman,
President Nixon’s powerful chief of staff. Hunts-
man said he found the experience of taking
orders from Haldeman “very mixed. I wasn’t
geared to take orders, irrespective of whether
they were ethically or morally right.” He ex-
plained, “We had a few clashes, as plenty of
things that Haldeman wanted to do were ques-
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