🔗 Share this article

Within the opening pages of the publication Authentic, author Burey raises a critical point: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of recollections, research, cultural critique and discussions – attempts to expose how organizations co-opt identity, transferring the weight of corporate reform on to staff members who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The driving force for the work lies partially in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her background as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a tension between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the core of the book.

It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as opposition to DEI initiatives increase, and various institutions are cutting back the very systems that earlier assured progress and development. Burey enters that arena to argue that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a collection of aesthetics, quirks and interests, forcing workers preoccupied with managing how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; rather, we should redefine it on our individual conditions.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Self

By means of vivid anecdotes and discussions, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, women workers, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which persona will “pass”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by working to appear agreeable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which various types of assumptions are projected: emotional work, disclosure and constant performance of thankfulness. As the author states, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the trust to endure what emerges.

According to the author, we are asked to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

The author shows this situation through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to educate his team members about deaf community norms and communication norms. His willingness to discuss his background – an act of transparency the organization often applauds as “genuineness” – temporarily made routine exchanges more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. When personnel shifts eliminated the informal knowledge Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he notes wearily. What stayed was the weariness of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be requested to share personally without protection: to face exposure in a framework that celebrates your openness but fails to codify it into policy. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Notion of Opposition

Burey’s writing is simultaneously clear and poetic. She combines scholarly depth with a style of connection: a call for audience to lean in, to question, to disagree. According to the author, dissent at work is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the act of resisting conformity in workplaces that require thankfulness for mere inclusion. To resist, from her perspective, is to question the narratives companies tell about justice and belonging, and to refuse involvement in practices that maintain injustice. It might look like naming bias in a discussion, withdrawing of uncompensated “inclusion” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the company. Opposition, she suggests, is an declaration of self-respect in settings that often praise obedience. It constitutes a habit of principle rather than opposition, a approach of asserting that an individual’s worth is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. The book does not merely discard “genuineness” entirely: rather, she calls for its restoration. According to the author, sincerity is not simply the raw display of character that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more deliberate harmony between individual principles and one’s actions – a honesty that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Instead of viewing sincerity as a mandate to disclose excessively or adapt to sanitized ideals of candor, Burey advises audience to maintain the parts of it based on sincerity, individual consciousness and moral understanding. From her perspective, the objective is not to give up on genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and into relationships and organizations where trust, equity and accountability make {