Problematizing authentic leadership: How the experience of minoritized people highlights the impossibility of leading from one’s “true self”

This short essay argues that the case of minoritized individuals attempting to lead authentically highlights barriers that anyone leading from their “true self” will encounter. By offering the concepts of “double consciousness” and “intersectionality,” the notion of the ‘true self” at the center of authentic leadership is problematized from the perspective of the individual leader. These difficulties are exacerbated by considering both the role demands of leading, as well as needs followers have for leaders to be in some way prototypical of themselves. In concluding, the essay contends that rather than privileging the impulse of their “true self,” those attempting to lead authentically must make deliberate choices about which “self” to foreground, as well as interweaving the requirements of their social and contextual location into how they turn up as leaders.