Do you feel your organisation has a strong feeling of authenticity? Can people see the truth of who you are and they trust this?
Do you feel you have a driving purpose for what you and the people in your organisation do?
In our leadership training and coaching work, one of the ’21 Positive Insights’ we focus on is ‘Developing a Magnetising Identity” (this falls under Step 2 of our leadership model – ‘PI Identity’).
Authentizotic Organisations
I recently came across the term ‘authentizotic organisations’ from Professor Kets De Vries, which I think is an interesting concept for leaders looking to create a magnetising identity in organisations, big or small.
It derives from 2 Greek words. Authenteekos – Authentic and Zoteekos – Vital to life.
Creating businesses and organisations that have a clear and authentic identity and are driven by a sense of purpose, greater than just making money, is of great importance to the people who work there and to the customers they seek to attract.
The pillars of forward thinking organisations
To grow and develop teams, businesses and organisations that fit this mould, we can all keep a strong focus on:
- Seeking ways to contribute to society directly and indirectly
- Allowing creativity to breathe for the people who work there
- Creating Intrapreneurs within the organisation
- Creating a flexible environment for people to work
- Developing Leaders and Employees who walk the talk
- Recognising people’s contribution and the successes achieved
- Finding a deeper meaning to what we do
Purpose, Values and Behaviour
I still feel that fundamentally the identity is driven by Purpose, Values and Behaviours
Purpose – The driving ‘WHY’ you do what you do.
As an example LinkedIn’s is to ‘Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful’
This is ours at The Leadership Training Workshop:
‘Through Positive Insight we empower leaders and organisations to think in new and exciting ways, be more fulfilled and achieve greater success’
That is what fundamentally drives me to get up every day, research, improve and do my very best for my clients.
Values – the guide for everyone who works with you.
You can see our values here.
Behaviours – The actions that show you are living your Purpose and Values authentically.
These 3 things will guide you, attract employees and lead to a more deeper feeling of fulfilment.
Contribution
There has been a wind of change for some time now, where organisations and their people (especially Generation Y people! – more of them in the future) don’t want to just work in the pursuit of profit. Corporate Social Responsibility has been part of that change. So how can you make a contribution directly with the services and products you provide and indirectly?
Today I have offered my services for free to the Music College where my daughter is doing a degree in Music and Songwriting. I am very aware of the self-confidence and self-esteem issues that can impact on artists and believe I may be able to help.
But does this truly resonate with you?
You will be in one of 4 camps:
- You’ve not worked on your identity but want to do this. We can help you.
- You’ve worked on your identity and feel it is a strong representation of who you are and what you do. Great but keep revisiting it.
- You’ve worked on your identity but it needs work. Again we can help you.
- You don’t buy into the importance of all this. We can only respectfully disagree here.
The thing is…… if your identity does not truly resonate with you, it wont be viewed as authentic and it wont connect with others!
Your own personal reasons for what you do may be about creating a better life for you and your families. It should be. But it can also be about something much bigger.
I hope you’ve found this article has sparked an interest in further developing the identity of the business or organisation for which you are a leader.
We are running our popular PI Leadership Discovery Workshop on January 23rd (Free with a copy of my book PI Leadership). At the event, one of the areas we look at is Identity, so if you want further insights in this area please join us then.
Otherwise, please feel free to give me a call on 0115 903 3133 or email me at tony@theleadershiptrainingworkshop.com and we can discuss how to help you in any way.
I agree with you that creating authentic and purposeful places of work is important. I have some tools to help people do it. They are all in the public domain and you are welcome to use them. This work is too important to worry about competitive advantage and intellectual property. I see these as antiquated ideas that just slow us down. Do have a look at the tools here http://bit.ly/purposetools. I would be interested to hear what you think of this approach.