Authentic Leadership - A Thesis by Mark Pochardt

Skimming a recently published Bethel University thesis on "Authentic Leadership and Followership: Bridging the Gap Between Self and Others" by Mark K. Pochardt, I find myself wondering about the place of authenticity in the leadership and followership conversation.

I find the whole conversation somewhat puzzling. When exactly am I ever not authentic? As the biblical author James says plainly, "You say you believe, I'll show you my beliefs by how I behave." When I behave in opposition to something I say I believe, am I violating my authenticity or am I simply demonstrating to the world I don't actually believe what I say I do? What comes first - behavior or belief?

It seems to me the entire question and pursuit of authenticity in any area of experience dangerously assumes the authentic me is always worth pursuing. Sometimes the authentic me is well worth rejecting. An ISO 9000 rating is only valuable to the degree the quality standards are good.

I'm trying to change the authentic me into something authentically worthy. I'm doing this because sometimes I'm authentically pretty awful. I wish I wasn't that way, I wish I could blame my junk on some discombobulated paradigm, but I know I can be a terrible jerk sometimes.

I yelled at a guy in the gym this morning for making the rest of us listen to his nasty, profane and unduly loud mouth. There was probably a more pastoral, seeker sensitive, Christian way of handling that conflict I suppose, but I felt a strong need to be loudly authentic with the man. Then again, as God is my witness (which of course He is!), I must also admit that what I really wanted to do was grab the guy off his treadmill and reduce his nose to mush. My wife was right there listening to this guy's nastiness. I really don't like men behaving badly around people I love. So was I being inauthentic by curbing my violence? Who the heck am I really? What does it say about me as a deeply committed Christian and a pastor that I would harbor such awful, violent thoughts or engage in such loud conflict from time to time? I do believe these urges and thoughts are not Christian and they certainly aren't good or constructive. So who is the real me? I suspect my wife could tell you all too well.

There's an old story of a man doing a public opinion survey among Amish farmers. Eventually, the researcher got to a question about religious preference. He asked the farmer if he was a Christian, to which the wise farmer replied, "I don't know, you'll have to ask my neighbors."

That's a guy who knows something about authenticity.