There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
| Peter Drucker
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The Paradox of Authenticity
One of the big lies of work, it turns out, is bringing your ‘whole self’ to the workplace. Being authentic is purported to lead to closer involvement with others, and in the context of others likewise presenting their ‘whole selves’ the workplace will lead to a sense of belonging and camaraderie.
Alas, not so.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who I have followed closely over the years, debunks that premise, based on research that authenticity can damage the credibility of those practicing it.
Chamorro-Premuzic wants us to consider the dark side of being authentic at work — despite all the surrounding rhetoric — namely, the way others will view you. He instead recommends ‘impression management’, instead:
On the one hand, promoting authenticity makes sense. Decades of research suggest that authenticity is linked to self-esteem, and people who perceive themselves as authentic often experience higher levels of well-being, including positive mood, energy, relaxation, and flow. Simply put, when our behavior feels consistent or aligned with our self-concept, we experience a sense of internal coherence and harmony that lubricates our ego. Conversely, when our actions clash with how we see ourselves, we feel inauthentic, fake, and guilty, and our self-esteem suffers.
However, feeling authentic does not equate to being perceived as talented or competent by others. Despite the subjective benefits of authenticity, being true to ourselves does not translate into being better colleagues or leaders. For example, in a recent meta-analysis of 55 independent studies, impression management (rather than self-perceived authenticity) was positively related to leadership emergence and effectiveness, as well as to both task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership behaviors. Even if feeling authentic feels great, you are more likely to become an effective leader if you focus on gratifying others and adjusting your behavior according to what the situation demands. So, it’s not authenticity, but knowing where the right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins, that makes you effective in work settings.
Impression management was not only just predictive of higher leadership performance in this meta-analysis, but also others’ perceptions of authentic leadership. The irony is hard to miss: the more of an effort you make to adjust or modulate your behaviors (in effect inhibiting and censoring your “whole” or “authentic” self), the more trustworthy and authentic you will seem to others. Far from being dismissed as inauthentic “fakes,” individuals who effectively manage impressions tend to come across as more competent, effective, and even more authentic leaders than their counterparts. In that sense, we could see subjective authenticity as the inability or unwillingness to engage in strategic and effective impression management.
In short, there is a tension between feeling good about yourself — by sharing your ‘whole self’ — and others feeling good about working with you — by considering how your behavior and actions will influence their impression of you.
As Pamela Paul put it, way back in 2022, when the ‘whole self’ movement was rolling across the workscape:
The problem is for many people, it’s no more comfortable dragging the whole kit and caboodle into the workplace than it is showing up every day on a relentless basis. Nor is it necessarily productive. Not all people want their romantic life, their politics, their values, or their identity viewed by their colleagues as pertinent to their performance. For some people, a private life is actually best when it’s private.
So here’s an alternative: Let’s all bring only — or at least primarily — the worky parts. You remember those fragments: the part that angsted over every résumé punctuation mark and put a suit on for the first interview, the part whose mom urged her to put her best face forward in the workplace? It’s that old-fashioned thing we used to call “being professional.” Heck, it’s the you you were for your entire corporate history, until the prevailing H.R. doctrine abandoned buttoning things up.
And especially now, when DEI is being ripped out of the operations plan, and the 996 trend is bubbling out of every crevice, people are pulling their soft parts back and resurrecting the hard shell that was formerly de rigeur.
The inconvenient aspect of this retrenchment, however, is that people aren’t robots, and much of what makes us human beings can’t be hidden. Parents still have children to deal with, for example, and a Black woman can’t conceal that she’s Black. That’s why Jodi-Ann Burey says (in Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work) authenticity at work is a myth, an impossibility, and being different from workplace ‘norms’ reveals an ‘institutional antagonism’ against difference.
Chamorro-Premuzic’s new book, Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead), argues we should drop the quest for authenticity at work because carefully managing the presentation of self1 pays off in workplace outcomes, but Burey goes a step further, abandoning authenticity as a fairy tale, a lie, a trap.
This could be the place for a progressive plea for a revolution in the workplace, but I don’t have it in me. Instead, I’ll just leave off here, stuck somewhere between Chamorro-Premuzic’s pragmatism and Borey’s resignation.
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Job Insecurity
Continued concern among US workers is reflected in a recent poll by AP/NORC, reported by Josh Boak and Linley Sanders:
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