Positive Psychology at Work:

Leadership

Authentic leadership

Avolio and colleagues (2010) began their engagement with this question by trying to establish whether good leaders are born or made. They undertook a comprehensive meta-analysis of existing research into leadership. They referred particularly to research on identical and fraternal twins studied over long periods of time. Using twins is a standard research method for trying to resolve nature versus nurture debates. Their summary of the analysis is that the emergence of people into leadership roles is due approximately two-thirds to life experience and one third to heritability. This suggests that life experiences are more important than innate abilities in achieving formal leadership positions: leaders are made.

Before conducting this research, Avolio and colleagues spent some time identifying what constituted the roots of good, positive or genuine leadership. To establish this they spent five years exploring the concept in discussion and by referring to historical accounts of what had been recognized as ‘good’ leadership. They found that leadership as a positive construct elicits such descriptors as genuine, reliable, trustworthy and real (Avolio and Lutherans, 2006). This research led them to ‘authentic leadership’. They conceived this authenticity as both owning one's personal experience and as acting in accord with one's true self. From their research, Avolio and colleagues define authentic leadership as being confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, ...