Authentic leadership:'root construct' to marginal 'technique' and back again?

This paper builds on a ‘strategic platform’ recently set out for the practice-based re-grounding of authentic leadership (AL). The call for a major shift in how we seek to understand what it means to be authentic as a leader sits well with the need to cast a critical eye on the leadership development industry proposed by the present sub-theme. The earlier paper considered how AL theory has been hamstrung by the hegemony of a generally accepted definition of AL, promulgated by a small number of influential authors, that has effectively reduced it from a ‘central organising principle’ for countering current disaffection with previous leadership theories to a mere ‘technique’ with only limited practical utility. The ‘technique-ness’ of AL in its current incarnation is made manifest in the near ubiquity of a single, commercially available psychometric instrument which is frequently adopted as the linchpin of leadership development interventions. The present short paper discusses how AL might be revitalised as a powerful and productive aid to leadership development through the harnessing of practitioner reflexivity to reground the construct from a practice perspective