The High Impact Leader: Moments Matter in Accelerating Authentic Leadership Development (review)

Bruce J. Avolio and Fred Luthans, both professors holding endowed chairs at the University of Nebraska, provide a helpful theoretical and practical introduction to Authentic Leadership Development (ALD). The authors’ stated goal is to “identify what the authentic leadership process truly looks like” (p. 5) and to guide readers on a journey into “high-impact leadership” by means of a methodology, a range of related exercises, and a rationale for increased self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-efficacy. They define Authentic Leadership Development as:

The process that draws upon a leader’s life course, psychological capital, moral perspective, and a “highly developed” supporting organizational climate to produce greater self-awareness and self-regulated positive behaviors, which in turn foster continuous, positive self-development resulting in veritable, sustained performance.

(p. 2)

In short, the concept of Authentic Leadership Development emphasizes authenticity—being true to and aware of one’s self and others—as the key to effective leadership. The authors understand ALD as involving a process that occurs across one’s life span, both in the gradually unfolding experiences of life and in one’s responses to unexpected positive or negative events.

Early in the book, a practical chapter on “Mapping the Journey of ALD” provides guidelines for each of four components that contribute to Authentic Leadership Development: self-awareness, self-regulation, self-development, and a new level of ALD (p. 64).

Chapter 3 provides a helpful summary of the past century of research on leadership interventions and development. Doctoral students in the recently created Gallup Leadership Institute program at the University of Nebraska—which the authors hope will become the “Bell Labs” for leadership development research (p. 47)—were tasked to review 100 years of leadership literature, focusing on the research question: Do leadership interventions matter?

Subsequent meta-analysis distilled the findings of 201 studies (out of approximately 3,000) that had used acceptable scientific criteria. The results, available at www.gli.unl.edu , reflected the impact of the “Pygmalion Effect” on many effective leadership development programs, i.e., the “so-called smarter or more motivated groups do better if the leader believes they are smarter or more motivated” (p. 50).

In an intriguing chapter entitled “Moments Matter,” Avolio and Luthans describe the importance of individual moments that have the potential to shape our lives. They cite the work of Nobel Prize-winning behavioral decision theorist Daniel Kahneman, whose research has focused on the “thousands of moments” in each waking day. According to Avolio and Luthans some such defining moments last only for a few minutes—or even seconds—while others unfold gradually over time.

Such “moments” can enhance self-awareness and self-regulation. The key to effectiveness in life is to be intentional and reflective, seizing and building upon those moments that have the potential to shape one’s own leadership or to contribute to the development of others.

Two of the most helpful chapters focus on the linkage between effective leadership development and the concept of Positive Psychological Capital (PsyCap). The High Impact Leader provides an accessible and practical summary of research presented in the authors’ 2007 Oxford University Press publication (with Carolyn Youssef), Psychological Capital: Developing the Human Competitive Edge. Building on the better-known concepts of economic/financial capital (“what you have”) and social capital (“who you know”), the authors define PsyCap as “who you are” (the actual self) and “what you intend to become” (your possible self). In short, “PsyCap involves investing in the actual self to reap the return of becoming a possible self” (p. 147).

Avolio and Luthans make an important contribution to the leadership literature by distilling, in two chapters of the book, information about four key components of PsyCap that hold great potential for enhancing one’s leadership abilities: (a) hope: an effective leader is able to communicate: “I am proposing two feasible alternatives” to accomplish a specified goal; (b) optimism...