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Have you ever been told you have a “strong personality” or that you are very direct? Has anyone ever called you strong-willed or, worse, a moral crusader? If so, you might be walking a fine line between authenticity and abrasiveness. At a time when “bringing your whole self” to work is often praised, it’s easy to mistake bluntness for integrity and rigidity for principle. Authenticity can turn toxic when your intention to stay true to yourself begins to crowd out curiosity, collaboration, or care for how others experience you.
Chances are, you’ve heard labels like the ones above tossed around or maybe even directed at you. They often sound harmless — in our experience, the target of such remarks may even consider them flattering — but they may be intended as a corrective critique. In fact, there are quite a few familiar comments about a leader’s behavior that may reveal misalignment between the intent of their authenticity and its actual impact. (See “What You Heard Versus What They Meant.”)
With this article, we aim to highlight when authenticity is a leadership strength and when it can detract from your leadership potential. We will explain how the very nature of authenticity requires you to counterbalance it with behaviors that ensure it helps rather than hurts your leadership.
How Authenticity Becomes a Social Liability
People who strive to be authentic are often principled, well intentioned, and deeply committed to making a positive difference. They have strong values, are willing to express those values, and are trying to change the world for the better by living their values.
Where is the harm in that? Well, our years spent coaching executives and our research tracking the real outcomes of authentic people in the workplace suggest that when left unchecked, authenticity can produce defensiveness, conflict, and/or reputational damage, ultimately affecting promotability and stalling career outcomes.1
And that is such a shame because individuals demonstrate leadership through their authenticity. They show that they are willing to take a stand, that they have a cause worth fighting for, and that their passion can energize others to pursue their dreams. We genuinely believe our world would be a better place with more leaders motivated to put their values into action.
So where does it go wrong? Many well-meaning professionals believe they’re showing up with integrity, clarity, and passion. But as humans, we tend to engage in some mental gymnastics that may convince us of our pure motives and positive impact, even if we are actually just rigidly and dogmatically imposing our will on others. Cognitive habits, including rationalizing our behavior, dismissing uncomfortable feedback, and doubling down on our values when challenged, help us to preserve a positive self-image when our behavior falls short of our standards. However, these habits can distort our view of how authentic we actually are and how our behavior is received by others.
The result is a growing disconnect between the intent of our authenticity and its impact. Our intent may be to convey that we are principled, but others may experience us as rigid. Perhaps we think we’re being transparent, but the way it lands for others is that we are blunt or hurtful. Checking those cognitive habits and accepting uncomfortable feedback is an important first step to becoming the kind of authentic leader people trust rather than the kind they avoid.
When Your Authenticity and Their Expectations Collide
Authenticity reveals itself in many ways, such as candid communication, the trade-offs you make under pressure, and the risks you take. At its core, though, is the extent to which someone attempts to stay true to their values — that is, whether they walk their talk, and whether others perceive them to be practicing what they preach.2 Interestingly, some of our research reveals that the more strongly people believe they behave according to their values, the less likely others are to perceive them as practicing what they preach — an inverse relationship.3 This initially surprised us: How could there be such a disconnect between felt and perceived authenticity? We’ll dissect how such divergent views arise and how leaders often make them worse.
Where it starts. Staying true to one’s values requires a high degree of self-awareness. However, as noted above, as human beings, we are notoriously good at rationalizing our behavior to the point of self-deception — particularly when judging our own authenticity.4 When our actions don’t match our values, we often find something specific to the situation that explains why we couldn’t act according to our convictions. For example, we said we care about the environment, but we also really wanted to take that trip to the Maldives. We think to ourselves: Most of our behaviors signal to others that we care about the environment, and to err is human, so surely a few instances of misalignment don’t negate our core values?
The thing is, others are likely to evaluate even a single misalignment between your words and deeds negatively and surmise that you lack integrity — especially the people who care about the value that you are seen to be violating.5 And people are especially attuned to such misalignments among their leaders.
One area where many leaders’ actions are often out of sync with their words is work-life balance.6 Priya started her role as senior executive of a larger IT company intending to build the best team in the world. She told members of her staff that she prioritized their well-being and that she strongly believed that it is well-rested employees who are going to finish the marathon. But in her efforts to lighten their heavy workloads, Priya began taking over tasks left and right to stay true to her word that she would care for her people. Employees received emails from her late in the evening, early in the morning, and over the weekend. Despite her frequent comment to staff to “do as I say, not as I do,” the damage was done. Her behavior spoke louder than her words in terms of what she really valued, and it signaled what behavior was expected of others and would be rewarded. Before long, she had created an always-on, late-night culture, and senior management called her in and asked her to stop driving her people so hard. Priya was baffled to hear this — it was the opposite of what she had set out to do.
What makes it worse. When the value in question is core to your moral identity (“This makes me a good person”), you are likely to explain away your own minor infringements.7 You may rationalize failing to help out a sick colleague, because you worked extra volunteer shifts at the food bank last month. And that makes sense: We want to see ourselves as essentially good and to protect that identity at all costs.
However, when you’re seen to act inconsistently with professed moral values, observers react even more strongly than they would to actions inconsistent with nonmoral values. Observers may label a person a hypocrite for even a single instance of value-action misalignment. Why? Because people often interpret someone’s value-claiming as a signal to others that the person believes themselves morally superior. Perceiving a “holier than thou” attitude makes others more vigilant about detecting even the smallest error.8
Consider the example of another leader, Marcos, who often lay awake at night worrying about how humanity’s treatment of the environment would affect future generations. He committed himself to sustainability by giving up a comfortable executive position at the retail company where he worked and taking on the newly created (and lower-ranked) position of sustainability manager. He regularly shared his rationale for this change to curious colleagues and spotlighted all his sustainability efforts. But when he inevitably and unintentionally violated the lofty sustainability ethos he regularly championed, such as when he awkwardly pulled up to a company picnic in a gas-guzzling SUV, people noticed. Ultimately, Marcos’s intense passion for sustainability made him the butt of jokes that portrayed him as a nag. If he was asked where he was going on holiday, the question was often a setup, and his answer would be scrutinized for any hint of unsustainable practices. He lacked the status and influence he needed to get the organization moving toward greater sustainability, and his own passion and dedication faltered. After five years, he gave up the sustainability role, disillusioned.
How it spirals even further. Most people not only want to believe that they consistently stay true to their values; they also want others to perceive them as doing so. When we really care about what others think of us, we will go out of our way to project a certain image. We may engage in lengthy explanations to rationalize our behavior so that people understand that minor infringements are not representative of our moral identity.
This typically doesn’t work. The more insecure we are, the more likely others will pick up on our attempts to protect our image.9 Instead of reassuring others of our authenticity, our defensiveness makes people more inclined to doubt it.
This is true even when we have fallen short of our values because external obstacles have prevented us from acting in alignment with them. During her long tenure at an organization with a strong macho culture, Celia had witnessed minority groups at a disadvantage, but her advocacy for fairness and more equal opportunities had gone nowhere. When a new CEO whose values aligned with hers promoted Celia to chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, Celia reluctantly agreed to take on the role: She was anxious about her ability to change such a strong culture but also cautiously optimistic, given the CEO’s support. She was undeterred in the face of the anticipated pushback from the dominant corporate culture, but what actually derailed her was her defensive reactions to sympathetic junior colleagues who chafed at her lack of progress. She found herself bitterly defending her commitment to the cause to anyone who would listen. The result was that senior colleagues became even more resistant to her efforts, while those who wanted to see change interpreted her defensiveness as an admission that she wasn’t really committed. After eight months in the role, Celia was exasperated and began to look for another job.
Stay True to Self, Not True to Ego
A fundamental reason why defensiveness raises doubts about our authenticity as leaders is that our rationalizations for our failures are not actually efforts to stay true to our values but efforts to protect our egos. Authenticity becomes problematic when it’s about our self-image — when it feeds our ego. Chances are, some of the most genuinely authentic people you have met wouldn’t claim to be authentic.
The antidote? In our coaching and research, we have tried or tested many options: improving communication skills, honing political savviness, and even changing environments in search of places that better match someone’s values.10 While those approaches can all be successful, by far the best advice we can give people is to pair authenticity with efforts to cultivate humility. Humility is essential to both being and being perceived as authentic. A humble posture begins with the admission that authenticity is hard: We are not perfect and often fall short of our moral standards. But humility also gets to the core of the issue: It quiets the ego that drives us to defend our values fiercely against legitimate pushback. Humility can help us let go of fragile identities that are not based in reality. Rather than seeking to be the perfect representative of our values — an impossible task for most — we can commit to the pursuit of those values. And, crucially, we can accept our shortcomings in that quest with humility.11
We call this humble authenticity. It’s not about being self-effacing. It’s about practicing humility as a discipline and leading with purpose but remaining open to challenge. Leaders who do this well reflect before reacting, listen before telling, and let go of the need to be right in service of finding deeper truths. That doesn’t mean they silence themselves or hold their values any less firmly. Rather, they learn to show up with intention, using tools that bring self-awareness, flexibility, and perspective into moments that might otherwise trigger a knee-jerk reaction driven by ego or emotion.
We recommend adopting a set of reflective practices that can support a developmental path to a healthy — not ego-driven — authenticity. (See “Three Steps to Developing Humble Authenticity.”) Each set of practices is designed to help you build self-awareness, allowing you to strengthen the foundation of who you are while also building capacity to share your truth with humility.
These practices are not theoretical. We’ve seen them work. The following real-world examples illustrate how leaders can take these steps to developing humble authenticity; it’s rarely a perfect transformation, but they can make meaningful progress. In each case, a simple practice made it possible to turn authenticity into connection rather than collision.
Step 1: Own your values. John, a senior consultant at an IT services firm, had always seen himself as direct, efficient, and results oriented. So when his manager suggested that he sometimes came across as distant and cold with clients, John was offended. He almost quit on the spot, convinced that the company didn’t value his authentic style.
As part of an executive MBA program, John completed a set of exercises to better understand his values. This led to the realization that his direct style sprang from his experience attending a boarding school with a harsh, competitive culture and that others who had different upbringings were less contentious and more harmony-seeking when communicating. He also realized that although he showed up as direct, efficient, and results oriented, it was not necessarily what he truly valued. This insight bothered him so much, he realized, because what he truly valued was mutual respect. He wanted to be respected for what he brought to the workplace, and he wanted to give others that same level of respect. His best moments in life featured instances of mutual respect, and that was an important value he also wanted to teach his kids.
Grounded in the value of respect, John began pausing before speaking in meetings, and he made sure to ask at least one question in every client conversation to signal his genuine curiosity about others and his interest in what they had to say. Six months later, John hadn’t changed his personality, but he had recalibrated his presence. Clients described him as “sharp but thoughtful,” and, for the first time, he was asked to mentor junior consultants.
Step 2: Manage your values. Camilla had just landed her first C-suite role. Publicly, she championed community impact. In practice, she made sure her voice was always in the room and, often, at the center of it. She opened meetings with conclusions, dominated airtime, and cut debate short to “keep up the pace.” Her intention was to lead with energy and conviction, but her team felt steamrolled.
At the suggestion of a coach, Camilla gathered 360-degree feedback. She listed three values she wanted to be known for — with “people first” at the top — and asked her peers, direct reports, and CEO to rate how often they actually saw those values in her behavior (with examples). The message was clear: “People first” scored the lowest, with comments like “Decisions feel made before we speak.” She had been preaching benevolence but practicing speed and results-first execution.
This feedback helped her identify another value she struggled to admit to herself: influence (and power). She wanted to have a big impact on others and, yes, also help others, but not necessarily by always being agreeable. Her benevolence lay in creating jobs and success for the organization and the people within it — a value she clearly prioritized over interpersonal harmony. With that clarity, she worked on aligning her actions with her true values. In meetings, she started holding back — not performatively to make others feel good but with intention. Rather than approaching meetings as a way to communicate her vision and action plan, Camilla reframed them as opportunities to collectively surface the best ideas on the team and to stress-test them together to craft the best possible course of action. She built a value plan around a one-year legacy statement: “I made room for others to shape outcomes, and the results improved for everyone.” She avoided falling back into old habits by designating an accountability partner in meetings to message her when she started monologuing, and she built in a post-meeting “impact check” reflection to maintain her progress. Camilla successfully calibrated her people-first value as “impact through others,” and in doing so, she didn’t lose her voice but instead amplified her leadership.
Step 3: Grow your values. Patrick, a senior leader in the Dutch maritime sector, prided himself on his commitment to excellence, and everyone could count on him to show up, meet targets, and deliver on deadlines. He put his best effort into everything he did, but he grew increasingly irritated when his colleagues failed to do the same. He became labeled as difficult to work with, with impossibly high standards, and was excluded from important projects. Subsequent stress led to a stomach ulcer and drained his energy.
A mentor challenged Patrick and suggested that he try a leadership retreat that had helped the mentor work through a similar challenge. Although skeptical, Patrick trusted the mentor and signed up for a silent meditation retreat that was known to have a positive effect on authenticity.12 During the retreat, he began to realize that there was a side of himself that he had ignored for many years: that he enjoyed music, good food, and exercise. He realized that there was more to life than just excelling at work. His passion, dedication, and commitment to high standards remained, but it expanded into other areas of life. His expanded interests enabled him to connect to his colleagues in new ways rather than being single-mindedly focused on work. This not only made him more approachable but also helped him not to expect narrow devotion to work from others, as he now understood better the importance of reserving more time for personal interests. The ulcer healed, and Patrick found himself more in harmony with himself and the world.
The Humble Authentic Leader
Authentic values are an essential aspect through which leaders influence others. The passion that comes with living our values can be contagious. The behavior reflecting our values serves as a role model for others to follow, and the values we speak of portray a future worth fighting for. They also shape others’ actions, since the values we communicate as leaders give followers a clear idea of what we care about and, therefore, how they should behave in order to be recognized, rewarded, and promoted.
We often celebrate leaders who express themselves honestly, but authenticity is not a license to dominate conversations or dismiss feedback. It’s a responsibility to show up with both purpose and perspective. Humble, authentic leaders don’t dilute who they are. They refine how they show up, with particular attention paid to how their values affect others. In doing so, they communicate their vision in a way that encourages others to engage with their values. As someone put it to a senior manager we know, “Be yourself, but adjust the volume!”
Humility is not about putting yourself down so that others can shine. It reflects intentionality and choice: You consciously choose which values to enact and when. The practices described in this article can give a humble grounding to your values. Engaging with them can help you ensure that authenticity is not just an expression of your true nature, to be excused by “I can’t help who I am.” Rather, as human beings — within the boundaries of our natural abilities — we can choose how we show up. By intentionally showing up with your deeply held values, your authenticity will naturally be paired with humility: You will realize how challenging it is to continually make choices that align with those values.
Authenticity is not simply “being yourself” but involves thoughtful attention and, often, hard work. That work can pay off in greater personal well-being, better relationships, and more effective leadership.