This week I was delivering a leadership workshop with a partner company to a group of senior managers working within a large blue chip organisation.

One of the questions we asked the group to contemplate was “What is the leadership mindset?” The question drew out some interesting responses. Some described it as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes to empower people, whilst others talked about leaders being born not made and that the “mindset” was either there or not.

For me the mindset for leadership is a simple shift in thinking and in priorities which moves you focus from ‘you’ to ‘them’ and therefore I side with Robin Sharma when he says “leaders can be trained” as I believe leaders are made not born.

The glory in leadership comes not from what you achieve but from what you help others to accomplish. It’s a selfless journey into empowering your people to better themselves and perform to their greatest ability. The priority of a leader is to remove the interference that gets in the way and instead create pathways which lead to peak performance.

More than that though, leadership is about authenticity. It’s about being real.

The problem is that in many businesses and organisations ‘leadership’ is something people think that you do. Leaders are ticking boxes or carrying out a set of functions rather than actually leading. Why? Because as much as companies may demand that people be themselves at work, but the ‘unwritten rules’ in organisations stop that from happening.

People become fearful of being the real them and instead create a ‘persona’ which fits the bill and keeps them ‘safe’. Which then perpetuates a culture where people fail to be transparent and adopt strategies to look after themselves first.

The further you journey into the world of leadership the more you have to be real. People can spot a fake a mile off. I am sure you know or have known with people that claim to be one way but in reality are very different, if not look to the world of celebrities for countless examples. To lead you must be the same person ‘off stage’ as you are ‘on stage’ to truly win the hearts and minds of the people. Your teams will notice even the slightest of inconsistencies between what you say and what you do. This video from www.50lessons.com is a great example of who a CEO stood for one thing in all that he said but his actions failed to match.

As leader you drive the culture. It is your actions that define how people around you will behave and respond.  If you demand people have a particular stand but you fail to hold up that same standard then you lose credibility and you know how incredibly difficult  it is to win it back.

So ask yourself, how real are you as a leader? If you were in the audience with your people watching you, what inconsistencies might you see? Do actions match your words?