Case Study :Am I Really A Leader?

Am I Really A Leader? The case study “Am I really a Leader?” explores Sally Helgesen as she strove to maintain authenticity in leadership. The case study leads one to discover the paramount importance of authentic and transformational leadership in the past and even in this century as those displayed by Sally. This paper will uncover how self-awareness predisposed Sally to authentic leadership, a description of the authenticity displayed by Sally, and finally the importance of Sally taking the “Mantle of Leadership” and the relationship this has to authenticity in leadership. It is clear from the case study that one’s self-awareness is an essential and indispensable factor towards practicing authentic leadership. It helps one to understand themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, their potential, their core values among other vital information. First, at the beginning, Sally had insufficient self-awareness. This is clear when she decides to take a trip to New York in the quest of becoming an author even though she had neither formal education nor training that would enable her to be a successful writer. Her quest quickly becomes disinteresting as her book failed to perform as good as she had hoped. She then discovered that her passion lay elsewhere through her writings. Throughout the travel, she also got to learn from her mistakes, recognizes her character, establishes self-awareness and uses it to her advantage. According to Northhouse (2015), self-awareness is among