Authenticity and the Performance of Leadership: Neither a Paradox nor a Model

Abstract

In Chapter 9, we examined the implications of deploying performative notions of leadership within leadership development programmes. One of the themes that participants raised in the particular programme we described there — and, indeed, in most other interventions where we have explored these issues — was authenticity; that is, the performance of leadership is perceived as being potentially “inauthentic”. Given that this challenge recurs so frequently, we felt it was incumbent on us to address it directly. Furthermore, and whilst acknowledging that the institutional setting (i.e. the NHS) of these participants privileges notions such as authenticity and integrity in its Leadership Quality Framework, recent years have seen, as we have suggested in Chapter 4, the emergence of authenticity as a topic of increasing concern within leadership studies.