Business
Business psychology professor: Being an authentic workplace leader is ‘overrated’
“Just be yourself” may be an oft-given piece of advice, but it won’t take you in the right direction as a workplace leader, one psychology of business professor argues.
While authenticity has been linked with increased self-esteem, it can also hamper a leader’s ability know when to stop advocating for one’s personal values and start advocating for their team, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University adjunct professor, says in his new book Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead).
“Feeling authentic does not equate to being perceived as talented or competent by others,” Chamorro-Premuzic writes in his book, an excerpt of which was adapted for Harvard Business Review online. “Despite the subjective benefits of authenticity, being true to ourselves does not translate into being better colleagues or leaders.”
As the return-to-office movement sparked debate not only on work-life balance but on how to integrate or separate one’s personal and professional lives. The debate is particularly salient for the emerging Gen Z workforce, who managers believe are sorely lacking in the soft skills needed to thrive in the workplace.
The generation eschewing traditional dress code and leveraging the “Gen Z stare” may embody authenticity, but some would argue it’s holding them back. Suzy Welch, a business journalist and adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, went so far as to air whether entry-level workers are “unemployable” due to the gap between the generation’s workplace expectations and employer demands.
The myriad voices in the authenticity debate
Workplace leaders have made their anti-authenticity stance clear. Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen said last year that employees should “leave your full self at home where it belongs and act like a professional and a grownup at work and in public,” while former U.S. Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras recently argued you shouldn’t bring your authentic self to work because it can inhibit teamwork.
Thought leaders have agreed on the importance of limiting transparency as the “bring your whole self to work” idea has been extensively debated and reevaluated in recent years. New York Times Opinion columnist Pamela Paul, famous on the internet for her contrarian center-left takes, wrote in 2022 that some employees may not want to feel workplace pressures to divulge information about their personal lives and that an effort to create an “authentic” workplace often defies the purpose of work for many people, which is to earn a paycheck. Writer and critic Jodi-Ann Burey, in her 2025 book Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, even called workplace authenticity a myth as it exists in a system that punishes groups like people of color and women, who may deviate from workplace norms.
Chamorro-Premuzic takes the argument against workplace authenticity in a different direction. It’s not about separating the personal from professional; it’s about identifying strategies that make you better at leading in your workplace.
In a 2023 University of Reading-led meta-analysis of 55 studies on self-monitoring and leadership, researchers found that managing one’s impression of themselves to others—as opposed to the feeling of maintaining a sense of authenticity—was associated with greater leadership effectiveness for both tasks and relationship-building. In other words, being a chameleon and adapting to different employees and workplace scenarios can be more effective than having a static set of values and strategies.
“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,” Chamorro-Premuzic said. “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.”
The authenticity paradox
Though empirical research backs up Chamorro-Premuzic’s thoughts around prioritizing adapting to others versus feeling good about one’s own values, he concedes it’s not an intuitive shift. To better understand why authenticity should be decentralized in the workplace, it’s best to consider how that authenticity may be perceived by others, he said: While you may see making a crass joke as showing teammates your sense of humor, the reality is you may develop a workplace reputation as being insensitive. If you overshare what’s happening in your personal life, it can wear away employees’ belief in your ability to lead clear-headedly.
“To navigate this intricate balance effectively, you need to harness the necessary psychological maturity to recognize that just because you feel like saying something does not mean you should,” Chamorro-Premuzic said.
Many leaders are already making these small decisions daily in what they post on social media, send in emails, or discuss around the water cooler. But these small decisions aren’t actually a disingenuous way of leading, Chamorro-Premuzic noted. It’s a way of developing an intuition that people may see as its own form of authenticity.
“The irony, then, is that by disciplining or editing our authenticity, we may actually come across as more trustworthy and competent to others,” he said.
