Startup CEO, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1The Importance of Authentic Leadership in Changing Times

I am excited to begin this book with a new chapter for the second edition that is very relevant for the times we live in (2019–2020). It is also deeply connected to a lot of the work we did at Return Path on our company culture and leadership development.

What Is Authentic Leadership?

There are many terms floating around business literature these days that are similar, related, overlapping (though not identical) and often used interchangeably, such as Moral Leadership, Ethical Leadership, Servant Leadership, and Authentic Leadership. All of them get to the same general point – that the most successful leaders in today's dynamic and complex world are the ones who exhibit the strongest character, the best behavior, and are the most caring about all their companies' stakeholders, especially their employees.

Why Now?

You can easily argue that authentic leadership has always been important. While you can certainly build and run a company without regard to ethics or people or good behavior – you can, in fact, build very successful companies founded on bad behavior in the short run – we have all known for years that CEOs and other leaders who engage in bad behavior put their companies and themselves at risk.

But something started happening in society over the last 10 years that has produced a disruptive, fundamental shift in the importance many organizations are placing on leadership behaviors. This isn't just about ...