Authenticity As a Culture-Setting Tool
Stop performing and start telling the truth. To yourself and to others.
.jpg){kind=link}
“Authenticity isn’t about being someone else. It’s about being the best version of yourself.”
— Fred Rogers
This week, I “descend on the maelstrom that is New York,” (as Lewis Lapham put it) for an annual gathering of the Baker Street Irregulars.1
The literary society, founded in 1934, has staked out this time of the year to celebrate the birthday of Sherlock Holmes, and the events serve as a set of movable feasts over four days that bring together longtime and new-found friends.2
As you may have noticed from the signature in every issue of Timeless & Timely, I make no secret of my enthusiasm for the great detective — this is part of my authentic self.
What Many Leaders Are Missing
Leadership fails most often not for lack of intelligence, ambition or ability, but for want of truth — truth as it is lived, spoken, and borne in full view of others. Or as you might otherwise call it: authenticity.
Authenticity is not a personality trait; it is a discipline. And like all disciplines worth keeping, it requires effort.
We have cheapened the word authentic by turning it into a performance. Today it is marketed as vulnerability theater: confessions staged for applause, “realness” deployed as a brand strategy.
But authenticity in leadership has never been about revelation for its own sake. It has been about coherence: the alignment between what a leader believes, what a leader says, and what a leader does — especially when it is inconvenient.
This is why authenticity begets credibility, and credibility begets trust. Remove the first, and the others collapse under their own weight.
Weekly Reality Show
Alan Mulally3 understood this, instinctively and structurally. When he introduced his Business Plan Review (BPR) to Ford as part of the Working Together Leadership & Management System, it was not a collection of tools masquerading as culture. It was an architecture for truth-telling.
The principles included these two expected behaviors:
1. Rely on facts and data
2. Expect the unexpected and expect to deal with it
Weekly BPRs were not interrogations; they were public acknowledgments of reality. Status items in executives’ charts were green, yellow, or red — no euphemisms, no evasions, no ritual optimism. Mulally did not reward perfection. He rewarded honesty.
That choice mattered. Alan knew that leaders who punish bad news do not eliminate problems; they eliminate visibility. And his authenticity — his refusal to express outrage or indulge theater — created credibility.
I train leaders on this system. Get in touch to see how I can help you.
People came to believe that what they heard in the room matched what was happening outside it. Trust followed not because he demanded it, but because his behavior made its absence irrational.
We grew not only to trust the process, but to trust each other as well.
A History of Authenticity
History offers no shortage of such examples. George Washington’s authority did not arise from brilliance of speech but from the constancy of his conduct. He declined the crown not because it would flatter him, but because it would violate the principles he had embodied long before independence was secure.
Abraham Lincoln’s authenticity lay in moral seriousness. He did not pretend certainty where none existed, nor did he outsource conscience to convenience. His credibility endured precisely because his words bore the weight of internal struggle rather than the polish of easy conviction.
A little farther back we find the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who governed not by charisma but by congruence. His Meditations were never meant for publication; they were a private journal — reminders to himself to live up to the standards he imposed on others. That inward consistency produced outward legitimacy. Soldiers followed him not because he promised glory, but because he shared their hardship and held himself to the same code.
In each case, authenticity was not expressive. It was ethical.
This distinction matters. Leaders who mistake authenticity for self-disclosure often confuse intimacy with integrity. They reveal feelings but conceal principles. They narrate struggles while obscuring standards.
Authentic leadership, by contrast, clarifies what will not be compromised, even when the leader personally pays the price.
In my own writing, I have argued that credibility is accumulated slowly and spent quickly4, and that trust is less a sentiment than a verdict rendered over time.5 Authenticity is the evidence presented in that case. Every decision testifies. Every silence speaks. Every inconsistency is noticed, if not immediately named.
Authenticity as Culture
Alan Mulally’s genius was not that he invented trust, but that he systematized it. By making reality discussable — without judgment — he made integrity operational. The process carried the values; the values restrained the ego. Authenticity became cultural, not performative.
That is the enduring lesson. Authentic leadership is not about being seen as genuine. It is about being governed by something real — principles that predate applause and outlast position. When leaders live inside that constraint, credibility becomes inevitable. Trust, durable.
And when they do not, no amount of messaging can save them.
In the end, authenticity is not what leaders show; it is what they refuse to abandon.
There’s so much to learn,
I teach leaders about the Working Together© Leadership & Management System, employing authenticity, integrity, accountability, and more to form highly competent and caring teams poised for growth.
If you’re curious, you can explore at www.bakerstreetirregulars.com
The BSI Weekend runs from Wednesday, January 7 – Sunday January 11 and encompasses a range of public and private events. See www.bsiweekend.com for more information.
Alan Mulally (Wikipedia)
“Why Does Truth Matter, Anyway?” Timeless & Timely, October 14, 2020
“Consistency and Accountability” Timeless & Timely, March 26, 2025
Authenticity, Integrity, and Accountability- of course!!! Thank you.