A life-story approach to authentic leadership development among South African black leaders

Abstract

This paper reports on the life history qualitative study done on seven black South African leaders. The focus was with regards to using life-stories to develop authentic leadership. Authentic leadership has been seen as a way to get leaders to be ethical and address from of the moral voids that exits. The study was triggered the ever growing challenges of corruption and unethical conduct across South African organisations.All seven leaders shared their journeys to leadership which were then presented in narrative form. The results showed consistent high levels of authenticity among all leaders and verified the assertion that life-stories present a strong approach to authentic leadership development. It was discovered that the leaders were able to negotiate various challenges in the leadership based on their lived experiences, while maintaining their authenticity.These findings provide a solid foundation for more leaders to use their life-stories to create meanings of their authentic identities. The study also provides strong input for future studies in authentic leadership within the various racial and ethnic groupings in South Africa.