We’re often told that good leadership starts with authenticity. Bring your whole self to work. Be vulnerable. Let people see the person behind the title. Brené Brown has probably done more than most to bring this thinking into mainstream leadership, and her definition is a compelling one: “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
It’s easy to see why that resonates. Most of us have worked with someone who seemed to be playing the role of leader rather than actually connecting with people. Every response is polished, every mistake is explained away and every conversation feels carefully managed. You may respect the position, but it is harder to trust the person.
Robert Greene comes at the question from almost the opposite direction. His work is far more pragmatic and deliberately uncomfortable. He argues that we operate in complex social environments where power, perception and other people’s interests matter. As he puts it, “life is like a game, a constant game of power.” His broader message is that saying everything you think and feel is rarely the smartest way to navigate that game.
So which is it? Should leaders be their authentic selves, or accept that leadership sometimes involves a degree of performance? I suspect the answer sits somewhere between the two.
Authenticity doesn’t mean saying everything
One problem with the conversation around authenticity is that we can confuse being genuine with being completely unfiltered. They are not the same thing. Imagine a leader walking into a meeting during a difficult period for the business. They are anxious about the numbers, frustrated with a colleague and privately wondering whether the strategy is working. They could share all of that in the interests of being authentic, but would it actually help?
The team may leave considerably more anxious than when they entered. The leader has been honest, but they have also transferred their uncertainty onto people who were looking to them for perspective. There are times when leadership requires you to regulate what you are feeling before you communicate it. You might be angry but choose to respond calmly. You might be uncertain but decide what information is useful to share. You might be disappointed with someone and wait until you can have the conversation constructively.
That is not necessarily pretending. It is judgement. Brown’s work on vulnerability is sometimes reduced to simply revealing more of ourselves, but authenticity also requires boundaries. The point is not to expose everything. It is to make sure the person people see is connected to who you genuinely are and what you genuinely value.
Leadership is partly a performance
There are also times when we have to step into behaviours that do not feel natural. An introverted leader may need to stand in front of 200 people and communicate with confidence. Someone who dislikes conflict may still need to hold their ground in a difficult conversation. A leader having a terrible morning may still need to listen properly to someone who needs them.
You could call that performance, but you could also call it doing the job. We do this outside work all the time. Parents stay calm when their children are panicking. Doctors deliver difficult news carefully even when they are affected by it. Teachers bring energy into a room on days when they may not feel energetic at all. The behaviour is deliberate, but that does not automatically make it false.
The real question is what sits underneath it. If you present yourself as caring when you fundamentally do not care about people, the gap eventually shows. If you manufacture vulnerability because you have learned it makes people trust you, people will sense that too. Performance becomes a problem when the character you present has very little connection to the person underneath it.
The balance is judgement
I do not think the choice is between being completely yourself and creating a carefully manufactured leadership persona. A better question is: which parts of myself are useful in this moment?
Sometimes your team needs to know that you are uncertain too, and sometimes they need confidence and direction. Sometimes sharing a mistake builds enormous trust, while at other times telling everyone exactly what you are worried about simply gives them another problem to carry. Sometimes you should say exactly what you think, and sometimes you should stop and consider how it will land.
That requires judgement rather than a formula. It means asking whether you are holding something back because the situation genuinely requires restraint, or because you are protecting yourself. It means asking whether you are sharing something because it will help the other person, or simply because you want to get it off your chest. Most importantly, it means checking whether the way you are presenting yourself still reflects what you genuinely value.
Authenticity without judgement can become self-indulgence, while performance without authenticity can become manipulation. Good leadership probably requires both self-awareness and restraint.
Know who you are. Know what you value. But also recognise that leadership is not about expressing every thought and feeling exactly as it arrives, there will always be some performance involved. The challenge is making sure the role never drifts so far from the person that nobody can tell which one they are dealing with.
Rod Matthews