Authentic leadership for individuals and organizations requires three vital components:

1. Embracing change
2. Incorporating instability
3. Enhancing the learning process

Imagine the thrill-every bone and blood vessel in your adrenalin-filled body yearning, screaming “the need for speed” as you lean forward in the ejection seat, ready for blast-off, advancing the throttle of this supersonic fighter to full afterburner, five explosive bursts, kicks-in-the-pants, in this state-of-the-art machine, catapulting the nimble craft to speeds that futilely resist earth’s last grasp!

But wait-should you abort the takeoff? This 2-seat F-16 was designed to be unstable in flight! No, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. This aircraft was designed to perform better during instability. And disaster lurks for those lacking confident leadership, now.

Similarly, your organization is poised, inspired to perform, but requires your lead to survive and thrive through the turbulence of change, as they too press on. You, individually and organizationally, can achieve more, break through barriers, and successfully combat the competition if you understand, value, and exploit the opportunities of positive turbulence that authentic leadership will guide you through.

By authentic leadership I mean the successful and positive influence of people in your organization. Leadership here does not refer to status, position, or merely doing things right, like any quality manager can do. We are talking about rightly doing right things for the right reasons and achieving the right results: organizational success and empowering followers through recognized leadership characteristics, and demonstrating these qualities.

Positive turbulence is a term first used by Eric Trist (Emery and Trist, 1965) to describe the constantly changing environment where organizations and leaders must operate, the forces of instability and change that improve, grow, inspire, and renew an organization, and present opportunities. Contrast that with the destructive forces of negative turbulence that can lead to chaos, confusion, and collapse of an organization. Turbulence can be unsettling or fatal for those unprepared.

Finally, I highlight the word through, also found in our title, which answers where the organization is headed, not just referring to a timing aspect; as in ‘when’ the turbulence comes that authentic leadership takes us through those times. But, more importantly the authentic leader boldly navigates the organization ‘through’ turbulent times to arrive at destination, safely and successfully. Now we are ready to look at our 3 Keys:

1. Embracing Change

Embracing change requires organizations to recognize change is inevitable, dynamic, accelerating, and unpredictable in both timing and intensity. Change, instability and turbulence can not be ignored. Political scientist Harlan Cleveland (1997) described accelerated change as the new destiny of leaders. That change is no longer linear, but accelerating exponentially, as we see technology synergistically combines with a new world of events, ever-learning people, and increasingly complex situations. Organizations must establish a culture that accepts being challenged by the speed, rate, substance and implications of change. Individuals must exercise self-leadership, the discipline and motivation to see beyond, anticipating change and the opportunities it brings. This requires preparation, which leads us to the next key, how to incorporate instability.

2. Incorporating Instability

The F-16 Fighting Falcon was intentionally designed and built to be unstable, where the center of gravity was purposely located aft of the center of lift for enhanced maneuverability; the opposite of previous airplanes. This unique and superior design required preparation, installation, and testing of a system that gathers information, sensors that measure and detect inputs on the surface or periphery of the vessel (or organization) to collect data, compute trends, sense changes, adapt to operator input, and formulate physical reactions of the flight controls to maintain stable flight.

How about you? Is your organization configured for ideas and innovation with an organizational structure designed to recognize and capitalize on the winds of change? A corporate culture that is receptive to ideas, dissension, diversity, different viewpoints, and change not only has built-in capability for positive turbulence, but has authentic leadership to lead through conditions of instability. What about your individual self-leadership preparation and capability? Do you readily accept change? Are you surprised by crisis consistently? Do you face crisis with confidence seeking the hidden opportunities?

For motivation, the most significant, recent, and best illustration of this failure is the summer of 2008 Washington-Wall Street corruption scandal, where taxpayers are expected to bailout the incompetent to the tune of $700 Billion plus. While some warned of the impending crisis, the organization (Congress) found in themselves no duty, responsibility, no integrity or accountability in the system, nor built-in checks or stopgaps to protect from and avoid the crisis. Ill-prepared for instability in the markets caused by energy, housing, and banking the resulting turmoil affects 350 million people directly, hurt by the failure of public officials who flail in the leadership black hole. They could have learned from history.

3. Enhancing the Learning Process

Organizations learn better by encouraging the constant flow of creativity with hindsight, insight and foresight. The most effective organization are the ones where creativity flourishes because it crushes the competition. (Gryskiewicz, 1999, Positive Turbulence) This requires more than gathering information from built-in sensors, although those sensors on the periphery are critical to sense even the most minute environmental changes. Like an over-the-horizon radar, authentic leadership gathers information from these sensors, plus gains intelligence from exterior means to see what’s coming. Expand the band width and range so the scope, depth, and volume of information can be analyzed effectively by an organization full of individuals who are committed to lifelong learning. This requires an open mindset to know, see, and anticipate the inevitable coming of nonlinear, accelerated, unpredictable change. Strategic advantage always belongs to the best learning organizations who coincidentally successfully navigate through positive turbulence. Enhancing creativity through expert coaches and consulting accelerates the learning process for both individual leaders and superior organizations.

A proactive dissatisfaction with the status quo is characteristic of authentic leadership committed to learning. That infamous comfort zone is now full of the dangers of complacency. Those days are over for the fliers just along for the ride who want to be pampered. The pace and dynamism of change’s thrill ride in the 21st century won’t allow complacency.

During these potentially unstable times, authentic leadership navigates the journey to destination success, outmaneuvering obstacles along the way, breaking through barriers. Conversely, LOL² (laugh-out-loud, lack of leadership) the kind many organizations and nations experience today face crisis because they do not embrace change and are therefore ill-prepared for times of instability. They have no built-in, designed institutional or personal capability for positive turbulence. They do not reap the beneficial results of deliberate offensive learning capability, and are not ready for discontinuous change, which often results in cataclysmic chaos and collapse.

Your Success

The result of a vessel (organization or individual) designed, tested, and prepared for inevitable in-flight instability has been one of the most agile, and maneuverable, high performance fighter aircraft for over 2 decades, the F-16 Fighting Falcon. And just the same, today’s business environment will reward the truly resilient organizations who accomplish the above 3 Keys.

Get ready to soar! Why? What is different now? Change, and it will remain so. Change is now changing according to Gary Hamel, author of “Leading the Revolution” (2002). And you can be ready for takeoff!