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It isn’t just about bringing your full self to work. It’s the discipline of standing for something specific, and refusing to be moved by voices that shouldn’t be moving you.
Authenticity has become the most misused word in leadership.
Most leaders treat it as bringing your full self to work, being comfortable in your own skin and telling the team how you really feel. None of that is wrong. It’s also not what your most critical stakeholders are measuring.
They’re measuring coherence. Whether your actions match your words. Whether what you said you wouldn’t tolerate is what you actually refuse when refusal is costly. Whether you can be pushed off your stated ground by the loudest voice in the conversation.
There’s a bit of human psychology to this: people want to know who you are, but they actually respect you less when they believe anyone can control who you are.
In a polarized environment, authenticity is a discipline, not a personality. And the leaders failing the test are doing it in a few distinct ways.
When the process is defensible and the result isn’t
Epic Games laid off more than 1,000 employees this year. One of them was a developer with terminal brain cancer. His family said the layoff also cost him his life-insurance coverage. CEO Tim Sweeney responded publicly, saying medical conditions weren’t a factor in the decisions, and confirmed the company was working with the family on the insurance issue.
The process may have been applied neutrally. That isn’t the test.
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