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The Leadership Quarterly 16 (2005) 395–417

b What’s your story? Q A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development Boas Shamir a, T , Galit Eilam b,1 a Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel b School of Business Administration, Ono Academic College, 104 Zahal Street, Kiryat Ono, Israel

Abstract

In this paper, we first develop the concepts of authentic leaders, authentic leadership, and authentic leader development. We suggest a definition of authentic leaders, which is based on the leader’s self-concept: his or her self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, self-concordance, and person-role merger, and on the extent to which the leader’s self-concept is expressed in his or her behavior. Following, we offer a life-story approach to the development of authentic leaders. We argue that authentic leadership rests heavily on the self-relevant meanings the leader attaches to his or her life experiences, and these meanings are captured in the leader’s life-story. We suggest that self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, and person-role merger are derived from the life-story. Therefore, the construction of a life-story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders. We further argue that the life-story provides followers with a major source of information on which to base their judgments about the leader’s authenticity. We conclude by drawing some practical implications from this approach and presenting suggestions for further research. D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Authentic leadership; Leadership development; Life-story; Self-concept clarity; Self-expression

A review of the literature reveals that there is no single accepted definition of authentic leadership and different authors use the term in somewhat different ways (e.g. Bennis, 2003; Bennis & Thomas, 2002; George, 2003; Luthans & Avolio, 2003; Terry, 1993 ). Certain elements, however, are shared by all

T Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 67 567022; fax: +972 3 5479499. E-mail addresses: boas.shamir@huji.ac.il (B. Shamir) 8 eilamcons@bezeqint.net (G. Eilam). 1 Tel.: +972 50 400513.

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