Gender,Authenticity and Leadership: Thinking with Arendt

Recent criticisms levied against authentic leadership scholarship suggest there is little reference to gender, or to lived experience more generally (Ladkin and Spiller, 2013; Sinclair, 2013). My purpose in this book is to explore authentic leadership through a broader lens by asking questions such as: What does it mean to lead authentically? And does gender make a difference? Hence, I want to encourage scholars to engage in a re-visioning of authentic leadership that accounts for the diverse ways in which we live and lead. Specifically, in considering the interconnections among gender, authenticity and leadership, I consider how thinking with Hannah Arendt can deepen our understanding of what it might mean to lead authentically. On the surface, authentic leadership seems to be concerned with ethics; yet, at a deeper level, this discourse is a narrowly defined quest for knowledge. Such a quest for knowledge is problematic, states Arendt (1971), because a constricted focus may serve to cover over what is meaningful about a phenomenon.

Arendt’s work is rarely taken up in leadership studies; I aim to show how her thinking offers new insights into contemporary debates on leadership. Born in 1906, Arendt was a German Jew who managed to escape from Nazi Germany, moving first to Paris, and later to New York. Her books, The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, were to bring her fame. However, she became infamous with her portrayal of Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi officials most implicated in the detailed organization of the Holocaust. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, she argues that evil, rather than being heinous is, in fact, banal. People were more likely to commit evil, in Arendt’s opinion, whenever they chose not to think. For Arendt, it was Eichmann’s thoughtlessness, rather than him malevolent intent, which encouraged his action against the Jewish people. For this comment on the banality of evil, together with her suggestion that some members of the Jewish leadership may have aided the Reich, Arendt was vilified (Young-Bruehl, 1982). Although she was devastated by the criticism and hate mail she received, nevertheless, Arendt did not waver from this view. Indeed in her last work, The Life of the Mind, unfinished at the time of Arendt’s death in 1976, she is still concerned with Eichmann and the notion of evil as thoughtlessness. In short Arendt’s inquiry into the nature of evil, as well as her critique of the bureaucratic mindset, has much to offer leadership studies.

My choice of Arendt may seem somewhat surprising for this exploration into the interconnections among gender, authenticity and leadership. After all, she (1994) stated publically that she was not in favor of women leaders. Neither does Arendt provide us with a conceptual definition of authenticity as Martin Heidegger does in Being and Time. For Heidegger (1962), authenticity is based on a resolute attitude and care for the other. It is this caring aspect that Arendt takes up in her work. What she offers, therefore, is a way of thinking about leadership and individual identity that is, at its core, concerned with relationships. For Arendt, human plurality is central to what it means to exist. But our existence, for her, is always differentiated, since each of us is unique. This distinctive style of being suggests that each of us has the potential for developing our own style of leading. If this is the case, then no leadership model, no matter how authentic, will offer us the conceptual richness to encompass the diversity of individual identity.

Indeed, thinking with Arendt alerts us to some underlying assumptions of the dominant or mainstream paradigm inauthentic leadership scholarship (Avolio, 2013). For example, self-knowledge is often regarded as a vital component of leading authentically (Branson, 2010). But too much focus on a leader’s self-knowledge may be at the expense of a deeper understanding of situated, embodied reality. Moreover, although some leadership scholars contend that acting in an authentic way will result in better organizational outcomes, insofar as action is contingent, we cannot predict leadership success ahead of time. Neither can we assume that a leader’s authenticity is necessarily an indicator of some profound truth (Ford and Harding, 2011). Hence, I remain skeptical of scholarly claims that authentic leaders can effect positive change merely by dint of their charisma. Not only does this kind of thinking reinforce the belief that charisma is necessarily good for leaders, it ignores the damage that “larger than life” personalities can cause to organizations and the people they lead. Indeed, one wonders why it is that scholars are so interested in authentic leaders when the media constantly provides us with so many examples of the converse. Rather than encouraging a genuine approach to leading, my book suggests that authentic leadership, as presently constituted, may be more inclined to promote social conformity.

It is noteworthy that few scholars make mention of the conceptual underpinnings of authenticity in hermeneutic, existential phenomenology. This form of phenomenology was first introduced by Martin Heidegger in contrast to the more scientific approach offered by phenomenology’s founder, Edmund Husserl. Although Husserl contended it was possible for a researcher to be objective, for Heidegger, our prejudices influence what we do. As such, Heidegger’s phenomenological approach is hermeneutic in that any phenomenological description is also an interpretation. His approach is existential in the sense that we are always-already beings-in-the-world (Gardiner, 2015). Furthermore, although phenomenology is alluded to in the authentic leadership scholarship, critics contend it is done so superficially (Algera and Lips Wiersma, 2011; Lawler and Ashman, 2012). However, I am not suggesting that authentic leadership is a meaningless concept. Rather, my task is to trace the ways in which authenticity unfolds within specific relational contexts at different moments in time.

Temporally, I suggest that authentic leadership has its roots in the past. My book traces the antecedents of authenticity to the Age of Enlightenment, because this is the period when modern ideas regarding authenticity were first formulated, especially with respect to the formation of the liberal subject (Taylor, 1991). Concentrating on Western European society, I show how authenticity is connected to emerging ideals about gendered subjecthood and changing notions of virtue. Developing a new way of thinking about virtue was important to the middle-class who sought to differentiate their conduct from what they regarded as the lax morals of their aristocratic counterparts. Bourgeois notions of virtue took on a distinctly gendered aspect; thus, whereas a man’s character was determined by his action, it was, above all else, a woman’s social reputation that mattered. By considering how authenticity emerges within a historical context, we obtain insight into underlying gender prejudice about women’s public role in society, which has implications for thinking about current ideas regarding gender, authenticity, and leadership.

Thinking and understanding are experienced historically. For example, in the eighteenth century, new ways of thinking about subjectivity encouraged an inward turn to the self (Arendt, 1958). According to Arendt, self-knowledge is part of a modern way of thinking that emerged first in early Christian thought. This inward turn would have made no sense to how writers like Plato thought about such topics. For the Greeks, “virtue was what we would call virtuosity” (Arendt, 1971: 131). As such, it was a person’s actions and deeds that mattered rather than their inward sensibility. This historical distinction is important, because when scholars state that our understanding of authenticity relates to the Delphic Oracle’s call “to know oneself,” this knowing would not have been understood in the way we think about it today.

Although what occurs in the past may provide insight into a phenomenon, each phenomenon will take on a different appearance in different times. If we concern ourselves with authentic leadership in the present, we note there is limited scholarship regarding the effects of gender (Eagly, 2005; Sinclair, 2013). Hence, I decided to focus the qualitative component of this book on women leaders’ descriptions of what authentic leadership meant to them. These accounts alert us to how gender as well as other intersections of identity, influence the public “doing” of leadership. As well, these leaders’ narratives highlight the diverse ways in which context is crucial to comprehending what it might mean to lead authentically within a contemporary milieu.

In much of the scholarship, however, this attention to context is overlooked (Eagly, 2005). Instead, scholars focus on specific individual characteristics that they consider indicative of authentic leadership. In particular, the scholarship suggests that, to be authentic, leaders must exhibit the following four characteristics: self awareness, balanced information processing, relational transparency, and internalized moral perspective (Avolio and Gardner, 2005). By concentrating on these specific characteristics, however, there is a lack of scholarly attention given to the specificity of lived experience. One reason for this inattention to lived experience may be that many scholars who write on authentic leadership lean toward behaviorist explanations and positivist forms of inquiry. Arendt (1958) contends that behavioral explanations focus on the most insidious trends in modern society, namely, social conformity, and the ensuing suppression of individual uniqueness. Hence, scholars who contend that authentic leadership can be summed up by specific characteristics obscure our diverse ways of being-in-the-world.

Conversely, an Arendtian analysis can deepen our comprehension of what it might mean to lead authentically by revealing how our embodied actions are mediated by our relationships. For Arendt (1958), each individual has a unique way of perceiving the world that is relational and embodied. However, she argues that our way of being is constantly impinged upon by social factors, some of which we remain unaware. Nevertheless, this background knowledge has an effect, not only upon how we perceive the world, but also upon how we interpret the actions of others. As an instance, each of us arrives at an understanding of authentic leadership, influenced by our experiences in the world. A deeper understanding of what it might mean to lead authentically derives from our engagement with one another through dialogue and, sometimes, dissent.

Our discussions will also be influenced by personal ethics. In the scholarly literature on authentic leadership, it seems to me that questions of efficiency sometimes outweigh ethical considerations. Although I recognize it is important for leaders to be effective, there are times when leadership efficiency may obscure questions of ethics (Ciulla, 2013). Perhaps an emphasis on a leader’s efficiency is not surprising in a world where our actions are often measured on short-term outcomes. Yet the present-mindedness that permeates much thinking today is precisely why a desire for organizational efficiency may override leadership ethics.

For Arendt (1958), the modern drive to organizational efficiency has many drawbacks, not least of which is that, in Western society, we have become “a society of jobholders” (p. 40). This focus on social status, and the conformity it entails, may lead to a lack of recognition of individual difference, and serve to obscure the “who” of the individual over the “what” of the role. Controversially, Arendt views bureaucracy as potentially the most tyrannical form of leadership. From an Arendtian perspective, bureaucracy is a nameless, faceless form of organizational practice that suppresses individual responsibility in favor of the abstract language of policies and procedures. Bureaucratic mindsets encourage thinking to become a particular kind of techne, whereby what counts is not theory “but its use and application” (Arendt, 1971: 154).

When technical efficiency eclipses moral efficacy instrumental terms like “knowledge mobilization,” start to dominate our public discourse. Yet how did we arrive at this place where knowledge can be mobilized? Arendt might argue that such speech is indicative of a society that privileges an instrumental way of thinking over a deeper comprehension of the world. This instrumental turn may result in a failure to reflect sufficiently on what is happening within the public realm. Such failure is dangerous, for when society forgets to examine what leaders are doing, this can prove disastrous (Arendt, 1971). Are today’s leaders engaged in the reflective thinking Arendt viewed as essential to ethical well-being? Arguably not. Instead, concepts like “speech chill” are emerging into the public lexicon. This “chilling” places limits on freedom of speech in favor of, for instance, governments’ anti-terrorism laws, allegedly designed to keep our families safe. Yet, this safety comes at a cost to our civil liberties. When we give up our right to dissent then, in Arendt’s view, we may be moving away from democracy and toward a more totalitarian-like state, without even realizing this is the case.

Returning to authentic leadership, I suggest that the dominant paradigm reveals a scholarly fixation on finding a perfect model. Is this fascination with leadership perfection yet another manifestation of celebrity culture, something that has seeped into our cultural DNA without us noticing? Arendt might say our current fixation with leaders is because we have lost faith in tradition, a sense of responsibility for the world, and the power that arises from collective action. As a result of this faithlessness, we turn to leaders, even though we know, in our hearts, that it is through collective action that freedom emerges.

Perhaps a closer examination of collective action may reveal an essence of something, such as the ways in which acting together builds authentic engagement. I want to suggest, therefore, that if this leadership turns to authenticity has anything to offer, it is the recognition that each of us has potential and promise. Currently, however, rather than a society that allows each person’s unique style of being to shine, our potential and promise is stifled by the idea that some bodies are more important than others. Furthermore, social constraints encourage prejudice, which negates our ability to show ourselves, or to speak out against injustice. But in not speaking out, our freedom is curtailed. Thus, we need to think through how collective action offers insight into authentic engagement.

Paradoxically, Arendt (1971) suggests it is in solitude that we may discover the essence of authentic public engagement. Yet this is not the same as self-knowledge but rather, following Socrates, what she referred to as the “two in one” (p. 179). For Arendt, when we act, we do so in the singular, whereas in reflection, our thinking is always dialogical. Even more importantly, she argues that it is because of this reflective thought that we are able to stop ourselves from committing evil acts. Through this reflective enterprise, Arendt contends that “we experience our authentic selves and recognize the uncertainty of the human situation” (p. 31). Coming to terms with life’s uncertainty means placing our faith in one another. Yet, in modernity, Arendt maintains we are unable to do so, because we are worldless. People become worldless in an Arendtian sense, when they choose economic well-being and status over the common good.

The world, for Arendt (1958), is the space between us, where things open up. Although we are surrounded by this interconnected space, we have displaced this deeper relationship with the world, and one another, by privileging ownership over human togetherness. To obtain a deeper sense of connection, Arendt (1971) maintains that we need to engage in a practice she described as “visiting,” which involves considering alternative perspectives in order to be able to judge, to question, and to think critically (p. 257). In this light, it occurs to me that we may have been looking for authentic leadership in the wrong places. Indeed, rather than exemplars of authentic leadership turning up in the workplace as I initially assumed, my conversations with those women leaders I interviewed transported me to different places. For instance, I visited a rural village in Jamaica, where authentic leadership was exemplified by how one woman organizes her community to work together to rebuild a church, following a devastating hurricane. I also visited the factory floor where another research participant learnt about leadership through watching her mother’s displays of courage in her role as union activist. Through these narrative accounts, I began to understand that authentic leadership appears in the engagement between people. Perhaps Arendt might say my discovery is not surprising. For authenticity lies in the in-between space, that is, the relationship gap between you and me.

Finally, my aim is to encourage scholars to expand their definition on what it might mean to lead authentically so as to account for the diverse ways in which we live and lead. This broader definition may enable us to discover how people without positional authority can alter their communities in profound ways. This more expansive context, in concert with Arendt’s insights, may open up new avenues of thought regarding the connections among gender, authenticity, and leadership.