Authenticity Fatigue: When "Be Yourself" Becomes Exhausting

I was sitting in a coffee shop last week, eavesdropping on two women at the next table (don't judge me—it's occupational hazard as a coach). One was venting to her friend about work:

"I'm so tired of having to be 'on' all the time. Everyone wants authentic leadership, but honestly some days I just want to do my job without having to bare my soul in every meeting."

Her friend nodded knowingly. "It's like authenticity became another thing on your performance review."

We used to think authenticity meant freedom. But what if it's just become another corporate performance—another exhausting hat to wear?

The authenticity trap we've all fallen into

You know those LinkedIn posts that start with "Vulnerability moment..."? Or the company cultures that pride themselves on radical transparency? The leadership advice that tells you to "bring your whole self to work"?

I used to buy into all of it. 

But here's what I've been seeing in my coaching practice, and honestly, in my own life: authenticity has become performative. We're not just managing our actual work anymore—we're managing the performance of being authentic while we work. 

Harvard Business Review published a piece that really nailed it: the pressure to be authentic often backfires because it forces leaders into emotional labor they never signed up for. 

Research backs this up too. McKinsey's 2024 "Women in the Workplace" report showed that women leaders experience something called "code-switching fatigue"—basically, we're exhausted from constantly adjusting how we show up depending on who's in the room. And here's a statistic that really hit me: according to recent research, 65% of LGBTQ+ employees feel the need to code-switch to progress in their careers, with the numbers even higher for trans and non-binary employees. That's not just about sexual orientation or gender identity—it's about the exhausting mental load of managing multiple versions of yourself at work.

Sarah's story: The expat executive caught between cultures

Sarah (not her real name) is a Turkish executive I've been coaching. She moved to Germany three years ago to lead a major division at a global agency group. Brilliant woman, incredible track record, speaks four languages fluently.

She came to our session a few months ago looking defeated.

She said, "I feel like I'm losing myself. In Turkey, my warmth and expressiveness were assets. People trusted me because I was open, because I showed emotion, because I connected personally before getting to business. But here, they want me to be authentic, but only the parts of authentic that fit their cultural norms. When I show enthusiasm, I'm 'too much.' When I take time to ask about someone's weekend before diving into strategy, I'm 'inefficient.' But when I adapt and become more direct and reserved, my Turkish colleagues visiting the office tell me I've become cold."

This is authenticity fatigue in action. Sarah wasn't just managing her leadership style—she was managing multiple versions of her authentic self depending on the cultural expectations of whoever was in the room.

Over time, she worked on reframing authenticity not as full disclosure or one-size-fits-all expression, but as intentional alignment with her core values while being contextually effective.

Sarah learned to lead with her natural warmth in one-on-ones and smaller team settings where it built genuine connection. In larger strategy meetings or presentations to senior leadership, she channeled that warmth into passionate advocacy for her ideas rather than personal disclosure. She stayed true to her values of connection and care while adapting her expression to be effective in different contexts.

As a result, she did slowly start getting more positive feedback about her management style but more importantly, she stopped feeling like she was performing authenticity and started actually living it.

James's vulnerability hangover

Then there's James, a startup founder in London. His leadership style was built around what he called "radical honesty."

Every all-hands meeting, he'd share his fears, his doubts, his personal struggles. The company culture was built around transparency—everyone was expected to share their failures, their mental health struggles, their relationship problems in team meetings.

Sounds progressive, right? Authentic?

James came to me burned out and resentful.

"I created a monster," he told me. "My team expects me to be vulnerable in every interaction. I can't just be the CEO making decisions anymore. Every choice has to come with a story about my childhood or my anxiety or my relationship with my father. I feel like I'm running group therapy, not a business."

What happened was that James's authentic leadership style had become another performance expectation—for him and his entire team. People weren't sharing vulnerabilities because it felt natural or helpful; they were doing it because it was now part of the job description.

The company was spending more time processing emotions than processing customers' needs.

James learned to practice what I call "strategic authenticity"—being transparent where it genuinely builds trust and psychological safety, but creating boundaries around when and how much personal disclosure serves the business and the team.

He started distinguishing between vulnerability that serves leadership (admitting when he doesn't know something, acknowledging mistakes, showing he's human) and vulnerability that serves ego (oversharing personal details, making every business challenge about his personal journey).

The shift was profound. His team started focusing more on problem-solving and less on emotional processing. Productivity increased. And ironically, when James's authentic sharing became more intentional, it became more impactful.

The authenticity paradox 

Here's the thing that's rarely discussed in all those "authentic leadership" articles: authenticity isn't a fixed state. You're not either authentic or inauthentic. You're not the same person in every context, and pretending you are is actually inauthentic.

I'm not the same Merve when I'm coaching a C-suite executive through a career crisis as I am when I'm having dinner with my family. I'm not the same when I'm giving a keynote to 100+ people as I am when I'm texting with my best friend. And that's not being fake—that's being human.

The pressure to have one consistent "authentic self" that you bring to every situation is not just unrealistic; it's psychologically exhausting.

Herminia Ibarra, who literally wrote the book on this stuff, puts it perfectly: "To be authentic, you need to shift from a static, narrow view of yourself to one that's more dynamic and evolving."

What real authenticity looks like 

Real authenticity isn't about emotional strip-teasing in every meeting. It's not about having no filter. It's not about being the same person in every room.

Real authenticity is:

Context-aware: Understanding that different situations call for different aspects of who you are. The part of me that's deeply empathetic serves my coaching clients. The part of me that's analytically sharp serves my strategy consulting clients. Both are authentic—they're just different facets of the same person.

Value-aligned: Your core values remain consistent even when your expression changes. Sarah's value of connection stayed constant whether she was being warm and expressive or passionately advocating for her ideas.

Boundaried: Knowing what parts of yourself you share with whom, and why. Not every audience needs or deserves access to every part of your inner world.

The questions that actually matter

If you're feeling authenticity fatigue—if being yourself has started to feel like another job requirement—here are the questions I ask my clients:

What parts of how I'm showing up feel natural right now, and what feels performed?

Sometimes we're so busy trying to meet others' expectations of authentic leadership that we lose touch with what actually feels genuine to us.

Am I being authentic, or am I just oversharing out of obligation?

There's a difference between transparency that builds trust and transparency that makes everyone uncomfortable. One serves leadership; the other serves ego.

Where am I allowed to grow, shift, or experiment with how I show up?

Authenticity isn't being static. You're allowed to evolve, to try new approaches, to be different than you were last year or last month.

What would it look like to be the right version of myself in this situation?

Not the only version of yourself, but the version that's both true to your values and effective in achieving your goals.

The permission you didn't know you needed

Here's what I want you to hear: You don't have to perform vulnerability to be a good leader. You don't have to share your therapy breakthroughs with your team to create psychological safety. You don't have to be the same person in every room to be authentic.

Leadership isn't about being yourself all the time, everywhere, with everyone. It's about being the right version of yourself, for the right reasons, in service of the right outcomes.

Some days that means being the empathetic coach. Some days that means being the decisive strategist. Some days that means being the vulnerable human who admits they don't have all the answers. Some days that means being the confident leader who provides stability when everything feels uncertain.

All of these can be authentic if they're aligned with your values and chosen intentionally rather than performed out of obligation.

The goal isn't to be authentic. The goal is to be effective while staying true to what matters most to you.

And sometimes the most authentic thing you can do is admit that you're tired of having to be authentic all the time.

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Hi, I’m Merve 👋

I work with ambitious leaders who are tired of being told to “just be authentic” without any real support for what that actually means in complex, high-stakes environments. Whether you're leading across cultures, managing through change, or navigating identity shifts as a founder, expat, or executive—I help you lead in a way that’s genuine, grounded, and effective. Not performative.

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