There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important according to Bennis (On Becoming a Leader).  Working in a leadership role with management responsibilities, I have found understanding the distinction and achieving a fine balance is crucial. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have responsibility for, and to conduct. To lead is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action and opinion. Leadership is authentic influence that creates value as defined by Cashman. In my view, both are necessary for success, distinctive and yet complementary and both require a personal and unwavering life-long commitment to the leadership journey.

In studying Cashman’s framework, leadership comes from a deeper reality within us. It comes from our values, principles, life experiences, and essence. I have spent considerable time understanding my core values and core talents. Through reflection, coaching, reading and learning, I have focused on exploring authenticity, influence and value creation. Authenticity is a well-developed self-awareness that openly faces strengths, vulnerabilities and development challenges. Influence is achieved by meaningful communication that connects with people by reminding them, and others, what is genuinely important. Value is created through the passion and aspiration to serve multiple constituencies – self, team, organization, family, community – to sustain performance and contribution over the long term according to Cashman (Leadership from the Inside Out).

Viewing leadership from this vantage point, I explored four essential questions to enhance my leadership effectiveness:

• How can I enhance my authenticity as a leader?
• How can I extend the influence I have?
• How can I create more value?
• How can I take total personal responsibility for my journey to authenticity?

For anyone thinking how to begin, Leadership from the Inside Out is about your ongoing personal journey to discover and develop your inner self to make a more positive contribution to your role at work, in the community and the people around you. By taking personal responsibility to develop a leadership path, it has helped me to connect with my core talents, core values and core beliefs to lead more effectively.

Leading with awareness and authenticity is one of the practices that I have chosen to master.  Working on being open to both my capabilities and vulnerabilities has helped to have an inner openness about my strengths as well as my limitations. Through the journey of self-awareness and attention to my own mindfulness, I have learned to manage myself and become better at managing others. Chopra best describes the journey to be authentic as having to to be everything that you are, omitting nothing. Within everyone there is light and shadow, good and evil, love and hate. The play of these opposites is what constantly moves life forward; the river of life expresses itself in all its changes from one opposite to another. As we discover and accept these opposites within ourselves, we are being more authentic.

Under Cashman’s leadership framework, the following practices have helped me to lead with more awareness and authenticity:

1. Build a foundation of genuine leadership with self-leadership, self-responsibility and self-trust.
2. Practice by pausing to reflect on how some beliefs open you up and how others close you down.
3. Develop an awareness of when you are leading with the qualities of character and when you are being led by the qualities of coping.
4. Listen to your authentic inner voice for what you really think and feel versus what others want you to think and feel.
5. Be open to learning from others without allowing yourself to be unduly created by them.
6. Have a coach as your partner to bring objectivity and facilitate self-awareness.
7. Assess your overall personal growth using instruments that capture inside-out and outside-in.
8. Understand and appreciate your strengths, but also be flexible and adaptable.

The leadership journey continues and over time my hope is to fully integrate all of the principles to lead from within. I invite you to fully explore your own leadership journey and a practical path that allows you to grow in authenticity, influence and value creation.

Roger D. Ali is President (volunteer) of Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), Golden Horseshoe Chapter, Chair-Elect (volunteer) for AFP Canada. He works for Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation as Vice President, Development.