 As leaders we know that authenticity is key to building trust with your team. Today I'm going to tell you how to be that kind of authentic leader. Welcome back everyone and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. We've heard a lot recently about people giving leaders advice to be more authentic or more genuine but it can be really hard to know what that really means and how to turn that into practical advice to be that authentic kind of leader. Today we're going to explore the idea of authenticity a little bit and I'm hopefully going to leave you with some practical tips that you can use to go be a more authentic leader every day. Being authentic isn't any more complicated than having your words and actions match each other and the ideals that you believe in and the way you get your words and actions to match each other is by basing your leadership philosophy and your decision making process on your personal core values. Now you may have already heard of core values or you may work for an organization that has published core values. Having your decisions and your actions in alignment with your core values and your organization's core values will help you be seen as authentic by other people. In addition, being able to articulate your core values and the ideals that you really believe in will help you in your day to day actions and will help you build trust with the others around you. Before you can build trust and be seen as authentic by living in your core values the first thing we have to do is assess ourselves and identify what those core values are and there's a number of ways to do this but the important thing is that we take some time and self-reflection to really dig deep inside ourselves and figure out what ideals mean the most to us. Some common examples of core values that you've probably already heard of are integrity, loyalty, compassion, service, respect and you don't have to choose any of those core values. What's important is that you choose core values based on the ideals that drive your personality and behavior. When I did my self-assessment I came up with four core values integrity, being honest with myself and others in living in my truth. Connection, building strong relationships with others creativity, trying to find novel solutions to help make the world a better place and excellent, if I'm going to do something I'm going to do it right. One thing that's important to recognize is that we have our own personal core values and others have their own personal core values add to that that our organization has its own published core values and while we're all not that far apart usually on what our core values are it is possible for there to be conflicts between our core values and some others person's core values or the organizational core values as a whole. Now as a business owner it's easy for me to make my company core values the same as my personal core values but as leaders it's important for us to recognize that these kinds of conflicts do arise when you need to be prepared to resolve them when they occur. A really good mentor of mine used to say core values aren't just a poster that you put up on the wall. It's really important once you've articulated your core values that you continue to practice them and live to those core values every day. Unfortunately there are leaders out there who don't practice the core values that they promote. These are the leaders that tend to have a hard time building trust with their teams and with other people. Real authenticity like the kind we talked about at the beginning of the video where your words and actions match each other and the ideals that you believe in come from practicing the core values that you've articulated every single day. If you or the organization you work for has a really cool list of core values post it in the comments for everyone to see. And if you need a little advice getting started on articulating your core values let us know we'll be glad to help you out. Check back later in the week going to have a blog post talking a little bit more about core values and the best way to get a hold of that is by clicking that globe off to the right that says subscribe that will bring all of our content direct to your inbox. Thanks again for watching and remember the future is out there. Lead the way.