Authenticity has become a central concept in leadership studies, but the question
of how followers assess the authenticity of their political leaders has not been
addressed. With few exceptions, the literature on authenticity and leadership
focuses on normative arguments rather than empirical study, and on the leader
rather than on his or her followers. Normative models of leadership advise leaders
to “be authentic.” Yet leadership is a social process. As leaders struggle to be
authentic, followers make decisions about the degree to which they believe their
leaders are authentic. In this study we develop the scholarship on authenticity and
leadership by introducing and applying what we call leader authenticity markers.
These are features and actions that others use to determine the degree to which
they believe a leader is authentic or inauthentic. We present findings from an
exploratory study of authenticity markers of African-American political leaders.
Political leadership of ethnic minority groups is a particularly important realm in
which to study leader authenticity and leader authenticity markers. We report and
discuss the seven authenticity markers identified in the research and five themes
about authenticity markers. The implications of these findings for leadership studies
and practice are discussed, as are directions for future research
