Are you being your authentic self?

I was leading a presentation on authentic leadership when a participant stopped me in mid-sentence.

She told me that she didn’t believe in authenticity. Her evidence? People at work didn’t seem to accept her behavior.

After a little discussion we both realized that she had been using the cloak of authenticity as an internal excuse not to adapt to change. She had been putting up roadblocks to progress and expecting people to be OK with that.

That’s stubbornness, not authenticity.