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Within the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, writer Burey raises a critical point: typical injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they often become snares. This initial publication – a mix of recollections, investigation, cultural commentary and conversations – aims to reveal how companies co-opt identity, transferring the weight of institutional change on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.

Career Path and Wider Environment

The driving force for the work lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her background as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the engine of the book.

It emerges at a time of widespread exhaustion with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and various institutions are cutting back the very systems that once promised transformation and improvement. Burey enters that landscape to contend that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and interests, leaving workers concerned with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; we must instead reframe it on our individual conditions.

Minority Staff and the Performance of Self

Via vivid anecdotes and discussions, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, people with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which self will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by striving to seem acceptable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which numerous kinds of assumptions are cast: emotional work, revealing details and continuous act of appreciation. In Burey’s words, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to withstand what emerges.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the reliance to endure what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey

She illustrates this situation through the story of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to teach his team members about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His eagerness to discuss his background – a gesture of openness the office often applauds as “sincerity” – briefly made daily interactions more manageable. However, Burey points out, that improvement was precarious. After personnel shifts erased the informal knowledge Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the exhaustion of being forced to restart, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be told to reveal oneself without protection: to endanger oneself in a structure that applauds your honesty but fails to institutionalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when companies count on employee revelation rather than institutional answerability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once understandable and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of kinship: a call for followers to lean in, to interrogate, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but principled refusal – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that expect gratitude for mere inclusion. To oppose, from her perspective, is to challenge the narratives institutions narrate about equity and inclusion, and to reject involvement in practices that sustain unfairness. It may appear as naming bias in a meeting, withdrawing of uncompensated “inclusion” work, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the company. Resistance, she suggests, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that frequently encourage conformity. It is a discipline of integrity rather than opposition, a method of maintaining that an individual’s worth is not dependent on institutional approval.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. Her work does not simply toss out “genuineness” entirely: on the contrary, she calls for its reclamation. In Burey’s view, genuineness is far from the raw display of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more deliberate correspondence between one’s values and individual deeds – a principle that resists manipulation by organizational requirements. Rather than treating sincerity as a requirement to overshare or adapt to sterilized models of candor, Burey advises audience to preserve the aspects of it rooted in honesty, personal insight and moral understanding. In her view, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and toward relationships and offices where confidence, fairness and accountability make {