Don't Be Yourself

7 Leadership

To be authentic means to be in touch with and express one’s true feelings, and although that may sound good, it doesn’t make sense. Leaders don’t need to be true to themselves; in fact, being authentic is the opposite of what they should do.

—Jeffrey Pfeffer

Few myths are as pervasive—and wrong—as the notion that leaders ought to be authentic. As Jeffrey Pfeffer, renowned Stanford professor and leadership expert, alludes in his book Leadership BS, the assumption that leaders ought to be authentic, in the sense of either expressing their true feelings or being true to themselves, is in direct contradiction to what effective or competent leadership looks like.¹

The stark contrast highlighted by Pfeffer underscores a sobering, ...