| This was a narrative study that explored how experienced leaders from Western cultures made sense of their personal journey towards achieving an alignment of their values, morals, and inner most intent, with the actions they took when running their professional organizations. This study examined the socially constructed reality of experienced leaders and what and how they internalized feedback so that they came to believe that their inner selves aligned or did not align with their actions. Many authors consider self-awareness to be the most important trait in authentic leadership and yet there is very little documentation of self-awareness behavior in the literature and even less advice on how to use the skill to achieve alignment values, morals, and inner most resolve. Through the voices of these leaders, it was possible to explore the thought processes that they used for making decisions, performance, and the reflective journey being taken while dealing with their challenges of self-awareness and perceived authenticity. Leaders who were struggling with self-awareness could unknowingly risk the goals of their organization and its followers by resorting to deceptive practices. The results of this study served to provide leaders, scholars, and leadership coaches much needed narrative examples of self-aware behavior as well as ignorance of that behavior that often results in deception. These narratives could be used to teach and explain self-awareness, deception, inauthentic, and authentic behavior. Further conclusions from this study included examples of self-awareness, deceptive thinking, and findings on when, how, and why sense making occurred in different organizational contexts. |
