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Authentic Leadership Starts With Knowing Who You Are
- Lindsay Sheldrake
- Sep 8, 2024
- 4 min read
Welcome to "Diary of a Leader" – Real Stories, Leadership Lessons, and Personal Growth
Here's the lesson I wish someone had handed me on day one of leading a team: you can't fake your way into trust. Authentic leadership isn't a style you adopt. It's what's left once you stop performing.
The first step in becoming an effective leader is knowing who you are. Why does that matter so much? Because the easiest way to lead and inspire people is to walk the walk, and you can't walk a walk you're faking. People can tell.
The wake-up call
I learned this the hard way in my first leadership role. I'd convinced myself that "the leader" had to act a certain way: more serious, more polished, more authoritative, less me. So I held back. I spoke differently. I performed a version of myself I thought my team needed.
It didn't work. Instead of earning their respect, I confused them, and myself. After one particularly awkward meeting, a colleague pulled me aside and asked, "Why are you being so... not you?"
That's when it clicked. I'd been trying to lead from a persona instead of leading as myself. From that point on, I stopped performing and started leading with authenticity. No scripts, just real conversations. It made all the difference.
Why authentic leadership starts with knowing yourself
Here's where it connects. If you know who you are, know what you value, and you're comfortable standing in your own truth, walking the walk gets easy. You're not juggling personas. You're not one version of a leader in front of your team and a different one in private.
When you've figured out who you actually are, everything you do lines up with that on its own. No more guessing, no more acting. That's authentic leadership, and it's the version people choose to follow, not because they have to, but because they believe in you.
Leading by example
This is the most effective way to inspire a team, and it doesn't require a single motivational speech. You just need to be what you expect from them.
Want your team to value honesty? Practice it yourself. Want hard work? Show them what that looks like. People follow actions, not words. Once I stopped trying to be someone I wasn't, leading got simpler, and a lot more effective.
What changes once you're leading other people
Knowing yourself is step one. Step two is harder: understanding who you are as a leader to other people, not just to yourself.
This is where I see a lot of founders hit a wall. They've got the solo part figured out. Then it gets messy the moment they bring someone else into the business. Founders are used to running the show alone. They build their own values and their own way of working, and it holds together right up until the first hire. Suddenly those values aren't just words on a page anymore. You have to figure out how they show up in someone else's behavior, not just your own.
Anchoring your values in behavior, not buzzwords
It's easy to say you value integrity or teamwork. It's harder to point to what that actually looks like day to day. If you value teamwork, are you collaborating and staying open to ideas, or just saying the word?
This is the same walking-the-walk question, just at a bigger scale. If you're not living your values, you can't expect anyone on your team to either.
Authentic leadership: common questions
What does authentic leadership mean for founders? Authentic leadership means leading from your actual values and decision-making style instead of performing a role you think a leader is supposed to play. For founders, that consistency is what makes it possible for a team to trust your judgment without needing constant reassurance.
How do you know if you're leading authentically or performing a role? A good signal is whether you act the same way in front of your team as you do in private. If you're holding back, softening your real opinions, or adjusting your personality depending on who's in the room, that's performance, not leadership.
Why does authentic leadership matter more once you build a team? As a solo founder, your values only have to make sense to you. Once you hire, your stated values become the standard everyone else is measured against. If your actions don't match what you say you value, that gap becomes the thing your team copies.
How do you turn stated values into authentic leadership instead of just talking about them? Pick one value you claim to hold and ask where it actually shows up in your weekly decisions. If you can't point to a specific behavior, it's a slogan, not a value yet.
The takeaway
Here's the advice: know yourself first. Understand who you are before you try to lead anyone else. When you're confident in who you are, walking the walk becomes automatic, you won't need to juggle personas, you'll just lead.
Then check the follow-through. Ask yourself: am I living these values every day? Am I showing my team what they look like in practice? Get those two things right and the rest tends to follow.
Catch you next time, fellow leaders-in-training.
Stay tuned for more reflections and lessons from the frontlines in the next chapter of "Diary of a Leader"—there’s plenty more ahead!
-Lindsay
Additional Resources
Here are some great resources that support authentic leadership:
Books on Leadership and Authenticity:
"Daring Greatly" by Brené Brown
"Start with Why" by Simon Sinek
"True North" by Bill George
Podcasts on Authenticity:
Finding Your Authentic Self with Tracy Borreson - The Wellness Dojo Podcast by Kyle Craik
What Makes an “Authentic” Leader? - HBR on Leadership Podcast
Articles on Leadership and Authenticity:
Leadership & Character Assessment Tools:
