🔗 Share this article

Within the opening pages of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: everyday advice to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a blend of personal stories, studies, societal analysis and interviews – attempts to expose how organizations take over individual identity, moving the burden of organizational transformation on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.

Professional Experience and Broader Context

The impetus for the work stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across business retail, new companies and in global development, filtered through her background as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey experiences – a push and pull between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of the book.

It lands at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and numerous companies are reducing the very systems that once promised transformation and improvement. The author steps into that arena to contend that retreating from the language of authenticity – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a grouping of aesthetics, peculiarities and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; rather, we should redefine it on our individual conditions.

Marginalized Workers and the Display of Persona

Via detailed stories and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by working to appear agreeable. The effort of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of assumptions are placed: emotional labor, disclosure and ongoing display of appreciation. As the author states, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the reliance to endure what comes out.

‘In Burey’s words, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to endure what emerges.’

Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason

Burey demonstrates this situation through the story of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to inform his colleagues about deaf culture and communication norms. His willingness to share his experience – a behavior of transparency the office often applauds as “authenticity” – for a short time made everyday communications more manageable. But as Burey shows, that progress was precarious. Once staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding he had established, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What remained was the exhaustion of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this demonstrates to be asked to share personally without protection: to face exposure in a framework that applauds your honesty but fails to codify it into policy. Sincerity becomes a trap when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.

Literary Method and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is both lucid and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a manner of connection: an offer for followers to engage, to challenge, to oppose. For Burey, dissent at work is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that expect gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, according to her view, is to challenge the accounts companies tell about fairness and acceptance, and to reject engagement in practices that perpetuate injustice. It may appear as naming bias in a meeting, withdrawing of voluntary “inclusion” labor, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the organization. Opposition, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in environments that often praise conformity. It constitutes a habit of integrity rather than rebellion, a method of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not merely discard “genuineness” completely: instead, she advocates for its redefinition. In Burey’s view, sincerity is not simply the raw display of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a honesty that resists distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of considering genuineness as a requirement to overshare or adapt to sanitized ideals of candor, the author encourages followers to maintain the elements of it grounded in honesty, personal insight and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the aim is not to discard genuineness but to relocate it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and to interactions and offices where confidence, justice and responsibility make {