Women Leaders: Choosing Authenticity or Facades of Conformity

It is a little bit ironic that today is World Sleep Day and last night I lost a good deal of sleep. I watched Jodi-Ann Burey's TED talk, "The Myth of Bringing Your Full, Authentic Self to Work." It forced me to re-think my approach to helping women strengthen their leadership presence.

There is quite a bit of research indicating that authenticity is an important component for leadership presence and overall well-being. My favorite definition of presence is Amy Cuddy's, "Presence is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values and potential."

In the book "The Confidence Code", Katty Kay and Claire Shipman review research on how women can develop better confidence. It often comes down to two things - authenticity and action.

In "The Gifts of Imperfection", Brene Brown encourages us to let go of what people think and cultivate authenticity in order to experience wholehearted living. There are many other sources of solid research that suggest the power of authenticity in leadership, organizational learning and well-being.

In her TED talk, Ms. Burey eloquently discusses how authenticity is often a double-edged sword for Black women. She tells the story of being urged to be herself but facing backlash and fewer opportunities as a result. I was reminded of the reality of being a White, cisgender women. It is easier for me (though not easy) to tell my stories and embrace my unique purpose and power in order to strengthen my leadership presence. I was disturbed that I had not adequately considered the experiences of Black and other underrepresented groups. It made we wonder if enough research had been done with people of color and their experiences with authenticity.

What does this mean for women who want to strengthen their leadership presence? Is helping them find more opportunties to share their stories and align their lives with their best selves the way to do this? I still believe it is necessary for women learn who they are at their best and show up as this person.

In "Race, Work and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience", there is a chapter entitled “Authenticity in the Workplace: An African-American Perspective” by Patricia Faison Hewlin and Anna-Maria Broomes. Hewlin and Broomes make the distinction between being more authentic and creating facades of conformity.

Facades of conformity are false representations that individuals in organizations create to convey that they embrace the organization’s values. In essence, creating a facade is a strategy people use to survive and succeed when they do not feel free to express their true selves at work. Research on facades of conformity resides with scholarly discussions of authenticity, particularly on how authentic self-expression is constrained when one’s personal perspectives are different or not valued in one’s workplace. Existing findings on facades of conformity highlight the experience of holding minority status across a combination of personal characteristics, such as gender, race, culture, work experience and values. In particular, a core finding is that the number of personal characteristics in which one identifies himself or herself as a minority is positively associated with the degree to which one creates facades of conformity, suppressing personal values and pretending to embrace organizational values (p. 152).

It is not enough to help women choose authenticity in order to strengthen their leadership presence. We must ask how we can help them navigate the reality of choosing when to be authentic and when to use a facade of conformity. In a perfect world, all organizations would embrace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion so that it would not be as necessary to use facades of conformity. It is the responsibility of organizational leaders to champion the change of organizational culture. This leaves us with a conundrum-we need more women with stronger leadership presence in order to put pressure on organizational leaders to improve organizational culture. This also puts pressure on women, particularly women of color, to have the courage to minimize their facades of conformity.

As a leadership coach, I realize more fully now that it is my responsiblity to help my clients not only embrace their authenticity, but also help them deal with the fallout of doing so. I can help them be more aware of their facades of conformity, how they are using them and how and when they choose to drop them. Choice is empowering.