By: Bill George

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Old school leadership is on the way out. The old notion that leaders need to be the smartest guys in the room - like Enron CEO Jeff Skilling - is being replaced with a new notion - that leaders should have high levels of emotional intelligence.

This type of leadership demands that you bring your authentic self to the table - the genuine you. This, and only this, will enable you to find your True North - which is your internal compass you'll use to guide you through the most difficult challenges you'll face as a leader.

When you find that compass, you'll be perceived as an authentic leader, and your people will naturally want to associate with you and work with you.

It won't be easy. As the author of True North - Bill George, current Harvard Business School fellow and former Fortune 500 CEO - says, it takes a lifetime of commitment and learning. It will force you to deal with the hardest person you'll ever had to lead - yourself. But in the end, it's the only way you'll get your life and business to the place you want to go.

What follows are the 12 principles that will help you constantly follow your True North.

Your Journey to Authentic Leadership

We start our path by looking at our journey to authentic leadership.

1. Framing Your Life Story

You can't separate your leadership style from your life story. The life you've lived up until this point has shaped you into the person you are.

As Howard Schultz said, "The reservoir of all my life experiences shaped me as a person and a leader."

For instance, when he was a child, he rememberers seeing his father in a full leg cast because he had slipped and fell on a sheet of ice at work. He was a delivery driver, and as a result of the accident had lost his job, and the health benefits that came along with it.

His family struggled because he had nothing to fall back on. Because of this, he dreamed of building a business that treated its employees well and provided health care benefits to all their workers. Today, Starbucks employee 191,000 employees, all of whom have access to health coverage.

All great leaders have learned to use their unique life experiences to propel them forward to something greater. Not as victims, but as people who have framed their life stories in a way that serves them and propels them forward.

Your task, right now, is to examine your life up until this point and find the experiences that you can use as the passion and inspiration for your leadership.

That is where you'll start to find your True North.

2. Losing Your Way

As we develop as leaders, we are all confronted with seductions that will pull us off course from our True North.

This can and will happen to all of us. This isn't a good and bad thing, this is a people thing. According to George, there are 5 different archetypes of leaders who have lost their way. Being able to spot yourself in them will help you diagnose the issue before it becomes a major issue.

Imposters These leaders rise through the ranks of a company through cunning and aggression. They are big fans of Machiavelli, and often spend more time focussing on company politics than generating real results.

Rationalizers These people appear to be on top of issues, but always seem to have a reason for why things went wrong - usually blaming external forces or subordinates. A favourite trick is to cut funding for things that will help the future growth of the company (like research) to make their numbers today.

Glory Seekers These people define themselves by extrinsic rewards and attention. Money, fame and power are their goals, and nothing will stand in their way from achieving it.

Loners Loners avoid forming close relationships, seeking out mentors or creating support networks. Their belief that they can and must make it on their own is their ultimate downfall.

Shooting Stars These types of people put their career advancement at the centre of their lives, to the detriment of everything else in their life. They are impatient to get to the top, and leave companies that don't promote them quickly. One day they find themselves at the top, overwhelmed because they didn't learn enough along the way.

As George points out, the true role for modern leaders is to empower other people to lead. You can't do that when you are in the game primarily for yourself.

3. Dealing With Crucibles

Even if you manage to avoid the trap of losing your way, you'll end up dealing with severe trials in your business and life.

Luckily for us, Abraham Maslow found that tragedy and trauma were the most important human learning experiences leading to self-actualization. Simply put, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the growth opportunity.

Crucibles can be many things - the death of a loved one, illness, discrimination, failures or the loss of your job.

George tells us that in order to navigate these crucibles, you need to believe in yourself and your purpose in life and summon the inner strength and courage to endure. And perhaps most importantly, you'll need the affirmation and support of those closest to you.

Now here's the interesting part. Research has shown that traumatic experiences can result in post-traumatic-growth just as much as post-traumatic-stress-disorder.

Think about your most traumatic life experiences to date. How did you resolve them? How did that experience shape your views about the world? Are those views still holding you back, and could you reframe them so they empower you rather than disable you?

Developing as an Authentic Leader

Now we continue our journey by focusing on developing as an Authentic Leader.

4. Developing Self Awareness

Now that we are starting to understand how we have developed as a human being (and thus, leader) up until this point, it's time to start digging deeper to understand ourselves even better.

As George tells us, this is hard but essential work in our development as a leader.

The best path to get there is by practicing introspection and getting honest feedback in your life.

The most popular introspective practice right now is mediation. But if meditation isn't for you, some people find that saying a centering prayer, taking a long walk or having deep discussions with a loved one will help you understand yourself more deeply.

Getting honest feedback in your life will help you see yourself as others see you, which is critical in helping you get outside your ego.

Throughout this process you'll undoubtedly uncover things about yourself that you don't like. That's why it's also important to practice self-compassion and self-acceptance.

5. What Are Your Values?

By gaining self-awareness, you'll be able to identify the values and principles that guide your leadership.

Defining your values forces you to decide what is most important in your life. Of course, there is no one right set of values - only you can decide what they are for you.

Once you do that, you can translate those into your leadership principles, which George defines as your values translated into practice. The example he gives is the value of "concern for others" might translate into "create a work environment where people are respected for their contributions, provided job security, and allowed to fulfill their potential."

Finally, you need to determine your ethical boundaries, which are the limits you place on your actions based your standards of ethical behaviour.

Making these three things explicit is a major step in your journey to find your True North.

6. Finding Your Sweet Spot

Your sweet spot is the intersection of your motivations and your greatest strengths. When you find it, you'll be inspired to do great things, and be confident in achieving them because you are using your strengths.

Nobody exemplifies the sweet spot more than Warren Buffet. This is how he describes it:

"I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year. I tap-dance to work, and when I get there, I think I'm supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It's tremendous fun."

The way to get there is simple, but hard.

First, you need to focus on your intrinsic motivations instead of your extrinsic motivations. This involves, to a great extent, finding what you love to do for it's own sake.

Second, you need to focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses.

This is not to say that you won't have extrinsic motivations or weaknesses. But your goal with those is to manage around them so that they never become too big of a challenge for you.

7. Find Your Support Team

As we've already discussed, having a strong support system is incredibly important to your leadership journey.

These are the long-term relationships you've built with family members, best friends, mentors and perhaps a small personal group. These are the people who care about you as a person, and will give you the resilience you need to get through the inevitable hard times you'll face.

As Paula Rosput Reynolds, the CEO of Safeco says:

When you go home at the end of the day and your employees think you're a jerk, or something has gone so wrong it seems hopeless, you've got to have somebody who says, "I love you unconditionally."

These types of relationships are the ones you need to build and nurture before you really need them, so make sure you find time in your schedule to invest in them.

One way to be very deliberate in this is to create what George calls a True North Group, which is a group of people who meet on a regular basis to discuss important issues in their lives.

8. Integrating Your Life

Successful leaders have demanding lives. As John Donahoe, the former CEO of eBay says:

The world will shape you if you let it. To life the life you desire, you must make conscious choices.

George tells us that leaders who have a life outside of their work produce better results than the people that subordinate everything to the needs of the company.

You can view your life as a set of buckets including your professional life, your family life, your personal life (including things like hobbies and your reflection time), and your community and friends.

If you don't find time for each of the buckets in your life, it's easy to get out of balance.

On the other hand, if you keep all the buckets in balance, you show up to work as a more grounded person, ready for whatever challenges the day or week bring you.

Your True North Meets The World (from I To We)

In this final section, we explore how to take what you've learned about your True North to be a more effective leader in your organization.

9. From I To We

Leadership is not about your ability to attract followers, but about serving others to bring about the best in them.

Making the transition from I to We requires a number of shifts:

• from self-interest driving your decision making to purpose driving it;
• from "I can do it on my own" to "It takes a team with complementary strengths.";
• from directing others to coaching and mentoring others; and
• from leaders getting credit to teams getting credit.

It's not an easy journey, as it requires the death of your ego. But it uncovers something even greater - your life purpose. It allows you to bring your unique gifts to bear on leaving a lasting mark on the world.

Ask yourself whether or not you've made that transition yet. And if not, what else needs to happen in order for it to be complete.

10. Your Purpose

Now that you've made the transition from I to We, you are ready to figure out the purpose of your leadership.

Your purpose is the way to translate your True North into making a difference in the world.

As George points out, defining your purpose clearly and carefully is important - if you aren't clear about your purpose, why would others want to follow you?

Most leaders find that their purpose has its roots in their life story. Sometimes it's an event in your early life that inspires you to find your way. Most people find that they need many leadership experiences before they find their true purpose.

As an example, former Avon CEO Andrea Jung was passed over for the top spot when she was 39. Ann Moore, then CEO of Time Inc. counselled her to "follow your compass and not your clock." Fast forward two years and Jung had found her purpose - the empowerment of women - and had become CEO.

Of course, you need to translate your purpose into action, and align your organization around it if it's going to have any impact. If you are starting your own organization, your purpose should reflect your True North.

If you are working in another organization, you need to find congruence between your Truth North and the organization's mission. If you can't, it's time to move on.

11. Empowering Other Leaders

Once you make the transition from I to We and know the purpose of your leadership, you are able to create an emotional connection with your followers that gives you the credibility to lead.

This is critical, because today's employees - especially millennials - seek leaders who inspire them and give them the freedom to decide how to achieve results.

In the long run, this is the best way to develop future leaders, build healthy cultures, and achieve sustainable results.

One of the most important things you can do to bring out the best in your team is to build mutual respect, which George believes is built by treating others as equals, listening actively, learning from people, sharing life stories, and finding ways to align around the mission.

If you can do those things, and fill your leadership roles with people who also do those things, you will create an empowered culture.

But you need to be clear that empowerment is not about the freedom to do your own thing, it is about the freedom to deliver on your commitments in a way that syncs with the mission of the company. Empowerment, if it's going to be successful, requires accountability.

12. Global Leadership

Finally, we need to examine the challenges of leading in a global world. In global roles, you'll need to have geopolitical savvy, reinvent business models for emerging markets, build diverse teams, and redesign organizational models.

While it's beyond the scope of the book and certainly this summary to give this topic a thorough review, what we will say is that we all need to be learning to pay attention to how we might be called upon to lead in these contexts. And to understand that what has worked in your own part of the world might be entirely ineffective in another.

To give us a construct for this, George introduces us to the concept of global intelligence, which includes the following seven elements:

• Adaptability
• Awareness
• Curiosity
• Empathy
• Alignment
• Collaboration
• Integration

Conclusion

Being a leader is hard. It's even harder if we are not true to who we are, and don't put in the time and effort to figure out our True North.

It's hard, trying and sometimes impossible work. But if we keep at it, the payoff is huge - a life worth living.