Introduction

Abstract

Several years ago I attended a fundraising event at which some women in the community were receiving awards for their work. The women honored came from different walks of life. Each gave a passionate speech that included thanking friends and colleagues for their part in the honoree’s success. However, the last speaker took a different route. In her speech she said ‘I’m an authentic leader.’ My immediate, visceral response was: ‘Isn’t that for others to judge?’ Little did I realize that my first encounter with the concept of authentic leadership would lead to this book, in which I consider the interconnections among gender, leadership and authenticity.

The common and the ordinary must remain our primary concern, the daily food of our thought – if only because it is from them that the uncommon and the extraordinary emerge.¹

Hannah Arendt