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As you may have noticed, pretty much everybody worships authenticity. It’s everywhere right now. In brands. In consumer culture. In how we talk about restaurants, designer handbags, and even office cultures.
When it comes to leaders, there is a misconception that they should just be themselves, stay true to their values, and not worry about what others think.
We hear it everywhere: in the leadership training, on LinkedIn, in boardrooms. “Authentic leadership” is sold as the antidote to stiff CEOs, to faux-transformational leader theatre. The premise? Just bring your whole self, speak your truth, don’t censor yourself, and don’t worry about pleasing others.
But here’s the rub: That advice can be counter-productive. Because leadership isn’t about you. It’s not about a narcissistic celebration of your identity, your values, and your unfiltered truth. Leadership is about influencing others, creating collective direction, aligning values together, managing tensions, adapting, and showing care.
When a leader uses “I am just being myself” as a cloak for ignoring what others think, resisting any feedback because “That’s not me,” or refusing to adapt their style because “I’m always this way”—they’re succumbing to hubris, not modelling humility. And that leads to disengagement, fragmented teams, and mistrust.
Academic definitions of authenticity tend to converge on a few assumptions or assertions, namely that authenticity is best defined as congruence between what people (especially leaders) say and do, their ability to resist external pressures to conform, and, of course, their tendency and commitment to be uncompromisingly true to their values.
In leadership research, authenticity is defined in fairly precise ways. For example: “Authentic leadership is the healthy alignment between a leader’s internal values and beliefs and their external behaviour.” Scholars identify components like self-awareness, relational transparency, internalised moral perspective, and balanced processing of information.
So authenticity = you walk your talk, you resist external pressures to become someone else, you’re aligned with your convictions. Fine. But here’s the paradox: If we take this definition strictly, then being “true to your values” could mean holding beliefs that others find toxic, oppressive, or destructive. In that sense, the authoritarian dictator or the cult leader might be “more authentic” than the average CEO who compromises.
Yes: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, or Mao Zedong may have acted with ruthless congruence between their values and their actions, resisting pressures to conform, and clearly not caring about what other people thought of them (at least prosocial, adjusted, normal people). The point being: Authenticity alone is not enough; it depends on what the values are, how they are enacted, and their impact on others. So, by all means, be true to your values and walk the talk: unless your values are antisocial, toxic, harmful, or psychopathic or narcissistic…
Narcissism: linking the “Just be yourself” message to narcissistic leaders
Let’s zoom in on narcissism. Research defines narcissistic leadership as the style exhibited by individuals who score high on narcissistic traits: grandiosity, entitlement, low empathy, self-centring, and a sense that the world should revolve around them. Narcissistic leaders often rise because they are charismatic, bold, and dominant—they “own” the narrative. But over time, their self-serving priorities, lack of empathy, and risk-taking can harm organisations.
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Now connect that to the “Just be yourself” leadership mantra: If you are the richest guy in the world, own your social media platform, hold all the levers of power—you can be yourself, unfiltered. Others will follow, partly because you are dominating the agenda. But for most leaders, “being yourself” often becomes an excuse for “I don’t need to adapt, I don’t need to listen, I don’t need to care what others think”—exactly the trap of the narcissist-leader. So the message “Just be you” ends up serving narcissistic impulses.
What good leadership is
So what does good leadership look like? It’s different.
- Caring for others: Leadership is about those you lead. It’s about creating conditions where people feel safe, heard, and valued—not about you dominating or broadcasting your uniqueness. Not because you are a lovely or warm person, but because that is more likely to help people perform to the highest level and turn a group of people into a high-performing team.
- Understanding where your right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins: You have personality, values, identity—that’s fine. But you also have a role serving a broader collective. Good leaders know that their authenticity is bounded: You don’t impose your values on others unilaterally. You let others bring their values; you hold your beliefs lightly, open to being challenged.
- Entertaining the possibility that your values or beliefs may be wrong: Leadership is not about being immutable, fixed, or unapologetically “This is me.” The best leaders keep asking: Are we all aligned? Is my perspective still valid? Does someone else have a better idea?
- Creating safety so people with different beliefs can work together: In a diverse organisation, you rarely win by being “just you.” You win by bringing together many people, many identities, and many points of view. Good leadership enables that. Examples: A CEO who publicly owns a personal value but then says “and I want to hear yours” and adapts strategy accordingly. A leader who is transparent about their journey, but also asks for feedback, invites dissent, and empowers others to dissent. That’s “authentic leadership done right.”
Final word: trust, authenticity, and the long line
To be sure: You won’t be an effective leader if people don’t trust you. And trust is built when people perceive your authenticity: when your words align with your actions, when you listen, and when you show humility. However, there is a long line between that kind of authenticity and simply “being yourself” or worse, “imposing your unfiltered self” on others. In fact, authenticity is at its best when others see it in you—not when you demand everyone react to it. It’s the combination of your unique personality and attitude and high emotional intelligence (EQ), skilled impression management (which stems directly from high EQ), and the ability to make others feel good and do better than they could without you.
So if you want to lead like an incompetent person, just be yourself. But if you want to lead like someone worth following—that requires something much more subtle. It means learning to edit yourself in the service of others, not amplifying your ego at their expense. It means turning self-expression into empathy, self-confidence into curiosity, and personal truth into collective purpose. Because leadership, at its core, is about suppressing individual selfish and narcissistic tendencies so that the group can function as a cohesive, high-performing unit. The moment you make leadership about you—your “authentic” self, your emotions, your brand—you’ve already failed. If you expect others to adapt to your unfiltered reality rather than the other way around, you’re not fit to lead.
