Polished vs. Authentic

I had coffee with a young emerging leader this week. She is learning leadership by the bootstraps (the best way in my opinion). During our conversation she said, “sometimes leaders can be too polished.” We went on to discuss how leaders that are too polished want to make leadership look good. They want to say the right things and make leading look gorgeous and important. But in reality, the best leaders to learn from and to work for are more authentic than polished. (more…)