HumanWORKS

So after last week’s entry into my newsletter where I awoke the somewhat more sarcastic part of my writing personality, I wanted to discuss a different topic on a similar theme.

So, let’s talk about the most exquisite corporate magic trick of recent time: the transmutation of “just be yourself” into “perform your carefully calibrated authenticity for our quarterly evaluation while we take notes.”.

I’m referring, of course, to the trite-but-evidently-not-serious corporate directive to “bring your authentic self to work” – a phrase that deserves its own spot in the Museum of Organisational Doublespeak alongside such classics as “we’re like family here” (translation: your boundaries will be tested) and “open door policy” (come in, but make it quick and don’t bring me problems).

What’s truly remarkable isn’t just that corporations have successfully commodified authenticity – though that’s impressive enough (lord knows they love a metric and associated spreadsheets) – but that they’ve managed to transform what was once a philosophical pursuit into a professional obligation with all the genuine human warmth of a LinkedIn algorithm recommending you connect with someone who died three years ago.

The Authenticity Measurement Framework™

From my observations, the corporate authenticity directive works a bit like being told you absolutely must dance like nobody’s watching, except there’s a panel of judges with scorecards, the dance floor is surrounded by CCTV cameras, and HR has drafted a 37-page document on Appropriate Spontaneous Movement Protocols.

Len Goodman will, of course, always give you a seven – which, depending on how the other scores turn out, will likely drag you toward the dreaded middle ground of “meets expectations”.

“Be yourself!” they exclaim with evangelical fervour. “But not, you know, that self,” they quickly add, gesturing vaguely toward whatever aspects of your personality might cause even the mildest disruption to quarterly projections. “When I said I wanted you to be authentic, I didn’t mean like that” as you launch into a massive monologue, apropos of nothing, about how you’ve always liked that one type of train you only see occasionally.

The acceptable authentic self bears a suspicious resemblance to a TED Talk presenter who’s had exactly one relatable struggle that taught them a valuable lesson which – through an astonishing coincidence – perfectly aligns with the organisation’s current strategic objectives. What are the odds? It’s like we only want to hear struggles when they have ended up being sorted which is the tone deaf equivalent of asking someone when they will be up to completing their project deliverable despite their recent invasive thoughts of self harm.

You’re encouraged to express your genuine thoughts, particularly when they involve enthusiastic agreement with pre-determined leadership decisions.

You’re welcome to bring your unique perspective, especially when it can be channelled into mandatory fun activities that will later appear in the recruitment brochure under “vibrant company culture.”. Just do me a favour and ensure those thoughts are pre-vetted internally before you mention, well, anything, OK?

In that sense, it’s authenticity as imagined by someone who believes personality is something you select from a drop-down menu during the onboarding process – created in Excel, naturally, given that most of the world’s businesses still seem to have a weird fascination with spreadsheets when other more advanced tools are available.

The Strategic Vulnerability Initiative

So when you have a look around, be sure to pay particular attention to the corporate appetite for a very specific flavour of vulnerability – one that’s been carefully filtered, pasteurised, homogenised, and packaged for safe workplace consumption. It’s the equivalent of ideas cooked up by people who think they’ve gone “a little wild” because they had two espresso shots in their pickup from Costa this morning – you know, the people who have personalities that, if they were selected via a colour chart, would be somewhere between grey and beige.

The ideal authentic vulnerability resembles a movie trailer rather than the actual film: edited highlights that suggest emotional depth without the uncomfortable duration of genuine human complexity. It’s vulnerability with excellent production values and a focus-group-tested ending.

The acceptable vulnerability performance includes:

– Sharing a challenge that demonstrates your growth mindset, preferably one you’ve already triumphantly overcome through a combination of grit, pluck, and corporate-approved resilience techniques (additional points if you actively cite the company was responsible for the triumph)

– Revealing just enough personal information to seem human but not so much that colleagues might need to reconsider their casual jokes about your demographic group (I mean we’d hate to see real change, right?)

– Expressing precisely calibrated emotion – enough to demonstrate you’re not a sociopath, but not so much that anyone might need to reschedule a meeting

– Demonstrating the ideal level of self-awareness: enough to show you’re reflective about your flaws but not enough to question why you’re working 60 hours a week to make someone else rich

So what are the cardinal sins that one must avoid in this vulnerability theatre? Authentic mentions of salary dissatisfaction, genuine confusion about the company’s seventeen conflicting priorities that required you to read 275 pages of buzzwords for no other reason than to tick a box, or legitimate concerns about why the last three people in your position burned out faster than a paper fireplace in a cash factory.

The Authenticity Consultant Will See You Now

I know it’s hard to believe that not every business needs to suck every last drop of humanity out of operations, but we know that there will always be people who want to try.

Where there’s organisational anxiety, there’s inevitably an entire ecosystem of consultants, coaches, and thought leaders who materialise like vultures circling a wounded business model. What we need is more abstract optimisation that looks nice on a PowerPoint because “metric go up” is synonymous with virtue.

It was from this rarefied yet fertile ground that the authenticity industrial complex was born – a magnificent marketplace of authenticity frameworks, vulnerability road maps, and genuineness methodologies all available for the reasonable price of your department’s entire professional development budget.

These authenticity architects offer such wonders as:

– The Seven-Step Genuine Self Activation Process™

– Authentic Leadership Bootcamps (because nothing says “be yourself” quite like being shouted at in a hotel conference room).

– Personal Brand Alignment Intensives (a process whereby your authentic self is carefully sculpted to match both buzzword driven market demand and your manager’s expectations)

– Vulnerability Assessment Tools that quantify exactly how genuinely you’re expressing yourself (with convenient benchmark data from industry leaders in authentic self-presentation)

For a modest consulting fee approximately equivalent to the annual salary of one of your graduates, your organisation too can implement a comprehensive authenticity programme where staff participate in mandatory workshops designed to facilitate the spontaneous emergence of their true selves, then return to their home offices identical to those they left, but now with the added pressure of performing “natural” behaviour on command.

The Authenticity Permission Gradient

One thing I do find interesting is that corporate authenticity follows a curious mathematical formula where the freedom to express one’s true self expands in direct proportion to one’s proximity to the C-suite. This produces what I call the Authenticity Permission Gradient, a fascinating phenomenon observable in any corporate environment – if you want to see evidence out in the wild, have a look around your particular locale.

At the executive level, authentic self-expression is recognised as the natural prerogative of visionary leadership:

– The CEO’s authentic communication style (whether cryptic, brusque, or reminiscent of a woodland creature with rabies) becomes a celebrated leadership trademark featured in business profiles

– The CFO’s authentic need for four hours of uninterrupted thinking time each morning becomes sacred calendar territory that not even an actual office fire would dare interrupt (but if you turn down two meetings, you’d best be ready for a grilling).

– The COO’s authentic preference for communicating exclusively through terse emails sent at 3am becomes “just how they work best”, abstract of what that might do for mental health of the mere minions who work for them

Meanwhile, several layers down the organisational chart:

– Your authentic communication style becomes “needs to work on professional communication skills”

– Your authentic need for uninterrupted focus time becomes “not a team player”, despite the fact that team you’re in being quite well regarded

– Your authentic work rhythm becomes “needs to align better with organisational workflow”

The Authenticity Permission Gradient reveals the uncomfortable truth: organisational authenticity is the corporate equivalent of parents telling children they can be anything they want for Halloween and then adding “…as long as we can make it from this pile of cardboard boxes and it doesn’t require me to learn any new skills, spend more than £5, or challenge my extremely narrow conception of appropriate costume themes.”.

“Look, how am I supposed to dress you up as the concept of “sadness” with this loose bag of tat I bought from Tesco, Cecil? You’re going to be a grape because this green body paint was half price.”

The Exhaustion of Performing Non-Performance

Perhaps the most diabolical aspect of the corporate authenticity mandate is the sheer cognitive overhead of simultaneously performing while pretending you’re not performing.

Traditional professionalism, for all its flaws, at least had the decency to acknowledge itself as a performance. You put on the suit, you adopted the demeanour, you played the role – everyone understood the game. It was uncomfortable at times, sure, but it was a mask that at least had some semblance of a ruleset to it.

The authenticity imperative, by contrast, demands a meta-performance so complex it would make method actors weep with inadequacy. You must craft a carefully calibrated presentation of natural behaviour, then meticulously conceal all evidence of that crafting. It’s like being told to create elaborate origami while making it appear you’re just randomly folding paper with no particular outcome in mind.

The cognitive load is staggering. At any given moment, you must:

– Continuously monitor which aspects of your personality are currently acceptable for workplace consumption and which must remain carefully locked in the authenticity penalty box

– Project natural enthusiasm for corporate initiatives that, were you being truly authentic, would prompt reactions ranging from mild bewilderment to launching your laptop out of the nearest window

– Maintain just enough uniqueness to fulfill the authenticity requirement without becoming the “difficult one” whose authenticity is somehow always causing problems

– Construct genuine-seeming responses to questions like “What did you think of the CEO’s three-hour vision presentation?” when your authentic response would violate several HR policies

The performance of non-performance creates a strange existential exhaustion. It’s like being a duck – appearing to glide serenely across the surface while paddling frantically underneath – except you must also strenuously deny the existence of both the paddling and the water while a team of duck performance consultants measures your gliding metrics against quarterly expectations.

The Final Commodification Frontier

Hey, enough of the hyperbole (even though I really like doing it). What we need to acknowledge is that we’re witnessing the late-capitalist equivalent of colonising the final unclaimed territory: the self itself.

Having already commodified your time, attention, skills, and emotional labour, organisations have now found ways to extract value from your very identity.

Your authentic self is no longer merely who you are – it’s a strategic asset to be leveraged, optimised, and deployed for organisational benefit.

Your personality quirks are now “potential market differentiators”.

Your personal history represents “engagement opportunities”.

Your values are “brand alignment vectors”.

Your genuine reactions are “content generation opportunities.”.

It’s as though someone read Orwell’s 1984, focused exclusively on the concept of thoughtcrime, and said, “Well thank you for the brilliant idea George, but how can we monetise it?”

This transformation represents the logical end point of what happens when the “brain-dead but shows one’s working” AKA spreadsheet thinking encounters human complexity. When even “being yourself” becomes another checkbox on your performance review – right between “demonstrates proficiency in Excel” and “consistently meets deadlines” – we’ve completed the circle of commodification with a thoroughness that would impress even the most ambitious McKinsey consultant. Bravo from the back from BCG and Bain I hear also.

A Modest Proposal for Less Exhausting Existence

Is there an alternative to this authenticity performance paradox? Perhaps. However, it requires acknowledging some uncomfortable truths about the nature of work in contemporary organisations.

First, complete authenticity in professional environments is neither possible nor desirable. Work inevitably involves some degree of performance and boundary maintenance. The problem isn’t that we perform at work but that we’ve created the exhausting expectation that performance should appear non-performative. It’s how I imagine Britt Lower felt in Severance trying to be a character who was trying to be a character as an actress who was trying to be a character – I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.

It’s also rather like insisting that Olympic gymnasts not only complete their routines but also convince judges they’re just naturally bouncing around like that for fun. “She stuck the landing, but I could tell she was deliberately trying to avoid falling, so I’m deducting points for inauthenticity.”. Being impacted by gravity, Grace? That’s a two point deduction on your review…

Second, genuine improvements in workplace wellbeing come primarily through structural changes rather than psychological reframing. All the authenticity workshops in the world won’t compensate for the fact that you’re expected to do three people’s jobs for one person’s salary while pretending this arrangement fills you with authentic purpose, as opposed to watching your blood pressure rise with the speed of the latest tech bro billionaire rocket into space.

You can authentic-self your way through a toxic workplace about as effectively as you can positive-think your way through a collapsing building. At some point, structural integrity matters more than your attitude toward falling masonry.

Third, actual respect for individuals manifests through systems that accommodate human needs rather than those that merely celebrate self-expression within narrowly defined parameters. True respect for authenticity means creating environments where difference is structurally accommodated rather than merely symbolically acknowledged.

Putting up a “Bring Your Authentic Self to Work” poster in an open-plan office where people can’t focus, can’t have private conversations, and can’t control their basic environmental conditions is like putting a “Just Keep Swimming!” motivational poster in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The sentiment, while admirably chipper, fails to address certain fundamental limitations of the situation.

The Quiet Dignity of Bounded Authenticity

Contrarian as I know I am often prone to be, there’s something quietly subversive about embracing what we might call “bounded authenticity” – the radical notion that you are under no obligation to perform comprehensive selfhood in environments primarily designed to extract value from your labour.

Bounded authenticity acknowledges work as a domain where certain aspects of yourself are relevant and others simply aren’t. It recognises that maintaining boundaries between personal and professional identities isn’t some failure of wholeness but a perfectly reasonable adaptation to the reality that your workplace is not, in fact, entitled to the complete, unfiltered you. If you want to bring it, that’s up to you – but you can’t be forced to “be yourself”.

This approach doesn’t mean becoming an emotionless corporate drone. Rather, it means making tactical decisions about which elements of yourself you choose to bring to professional contexts – not because authenticity is a performance obligation but because selective authenticity is a resource management strategy.

Think of it as authentic minimalism: bringing exactly the amount of yourself that serves your purposes rather than deploying your complete selfhood in service of organisational theatre.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The authenticity industrial complex ultimately reveals a profound anxiety at the heart of contemporary work culture – a desperate attempt to reconcile fundamentally dehumanising systems with the human need for meaning and connection. Rather than redesigning those systems, we’ve opted to demand that humans perform humanity more convincingly within inhospitable environments.

It’s a bit like discovering your fish tank has no water, then addressing the problem by requiring the fish to give enthusiastic presentations about how they’re implementing innovative dry-breathing initiatives rather than, you know, adding water to the tank. “The handbook says ‘water is weakness’, Matthew, so get those fish working with air – it’s all we’ve got.”.

Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that authentic self-expression emerges naturally in environments designed around human needs.

It doesn’t require facilitation, measurement, or optimisation.

It simply appears when people feel genuinely secure, valued, and free from the pressure to perform aspects of themselves that should emerge organically or not at all.

You know – the basics. Like your manager actually giving a shit about how you feel rather than what your happiness score is today.

Until then, the next time your organisation invites you to “bring your authentic self to work,” perhaps the most authentic response is a politely raised eyebrow and the quiet recognition that your genuine self is not a corporate resource to be harvested but your own sovereign territory – portions of which you might occasionally lease to your employer under carefully negotiated terms, but never surrender to institutional ownership disguised as psychological liberation.

After all, there’s something rather magnificently authentic about recognising when authenticity itself has become just another performance metric – and deciding, with quiet dignity, that some aspects of yourself deserve better stages on which to perform than the corporate authenticity theatre.

This article originally appeared on my personal LinkedIn on April 10th, 2025. The link to the original article is located here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/authenticity-industrial-complex-how-being-yourself-matt-turvey-frsa-cqyze/?trackingId=jzhzJ%2BlCRPSJJesIJOhx%2Fg%3D%3D