The modern workplace is awash with language about “bringing your whole self to work,” yet many employees still feel compelled to hide who they are from nine to five. From masking accents and toning down personalities to concealing religious beliefs or aspects of identity, the gap between corporate rhetoric and daily reality remains stubbornly wide. At London Business School, researchers and practitioners are asking a deceptively simple question: if authenticity is now hailed as a driver of engagement, innovation and performance, why is it still so hard to be ourselves at work?
This article explores the subtle norms, structural barriers and unspoken trade‑offs that shape how much of ourselves we dare to reveal in professional settings.Drawing on insights from organizational psychology, leadership research and lived experience, it examines why authenticity frequently enough feels risky, how leaders and systems unintentionally penalise difference, and what it would take to create workplaces where being oneself is not a slogan, but a safe and lasting reality.
The hidden cost of masking our identities in modern workplaces
Every time an employee edits their accent, hides a religious practice, or downplays a disability to fit in, there is a quiet transaction taking place: authenticity is traded for perceived safety. This constant self-editing is more than an inconvenience; it drains cognitive bandwidth and emotional energy that could otherwise fuel innovation, collaboration and leadership. Research shows that people who routinely suppress parts of who they are report higher levels of stress, lower engagement and a greater intention to leave. The impact is not evenly distributed. Those from underrepresented or marginalised groups often carry the heaviest burden, navigating unwritten rules about what is considered “professional” in environments that were never designed with them in mind.
For organisations,the financial and cultural fallout is meaningful,even if it rarely appears in a budget line. Hidden identities can lead to:
- Muted ideas – employees self-censor, avoiding “risky” perspectives that might challenge the status quo.
- Shallow trust – teams struggle to build genuine psychological safety when people feel they must perform a role.
- Quiet attrition – high performers leave not because of the work, but because of the cost of staying silent.
| Workplace Reality | Visible Cost | Hidden Cost |
|---|---|---|
| “Fit the culture” pressure | Lower diversity in leadership | Missed market insight and innovation |
| Code-switching and masking | Fatigue and burnout | Reduced creativity and problem-solving |
| Silencing difference | High turnover | Erosion of trust and employer brand |
How corporate culture and leadership styles suppress authenticity
In many organisations, the unwritten rule is clear: fit in first, stand out later. Leaders set the tempo, and when they prize constant availability, unflappable optimism or a narrow definition of “professionalism,” employees quickly learn which parts of themselves are welcome and which should be left at the door. A manager who rewards only the loudest voices in meetings will, unintentionally, sideline reflective or understated colleagues. A CEO who celebrates a single “heroic” leadership archetype – typically individualistic, hyper-confident, always “on” – sends a signal that different working styles are liabilities, not assets. The result is a workplace where people curate a safe, diluted version of themselves, carefully editing their language, dress and even their humour to match what powerful role models appear to value.
This self-editing is reinforced by day-to-day practices that look neutral on paper but are highly coded in practice. Consider how performance is framed in leadership conversations:
| Leadership focus | Implicit message to staff |
|---|---|
| Heroic individual wins | “Don’t show doubt; never ask for help.” |
| Perfect polish in client settings | “Mask your background, accent and emotions.” |
| Always-on responsiveness | “Your life outside work is a problem.” |
- Micro-signals from leaders – eye-rolling at dissent, rewarding sameness in promotion panels, or laughing off concerns about workload – tell people that honesty carries a career cost.
- Legacy norms – such as favouring those who mirror the dominant demographic or social class – narrow what is considered “leadership material,” pushing others to mimic rather than contribute.
- Short-term performance pressure – with leaders judged on quarterly numbers, not on psychological safety – discourages experimentation with more inclusive, human leadership styles.
Practical steps for managers to create psychologically safe teams
Psychological safety is built in the small moments that often go unnoticed: the one-to-one where a manager admits, “I don’t know, but let’s find out,” or the team meeting where the quietest person is invited to speak first. Managers can set expectations by co-creating simple team agreements, such as how to handle mistakes and disagreements, and explicitly rewarding learning behavior rather than just flawless execution. Consider using a short, recurring “pulse check” at the end of meetings – one word per person on how they’re leaving the room – to surface tension early. Over time, these routines normalise candour and reduce the invisible cognitive load employees carry when they feel they must edit themselves to fit in.
- Model fallibility – talk openly about your own missteps and what you learned.
- Invite challenge – ask, “What am I missing?” and listen without defending.
- Protect dissent – step in when ideas are mocked or dismissed too quickly.
- Share air-time – use round-robins or “no second turns” until everyone has spoken.
- Respond, don’t react – acknowledge emotion first, then move to problem-solving.
| Manager Habit | Signal to Team |
|---|---|
| Admits uncertainty | “It’s safe to learn in public.” |
| Thanks people for bad news | “Honesty matters more than optics.” |
| Asks for quiet voices first | “Every perspective counts here.” |
| Follows up on concerns | “Speaking up leads to action.” |
Reimagining inclusion at London Business School and beyond
At a school that trains future leaders, diversity can no longer mean just counting heads in a classroom photo; it has to mean who feels heard when the door closes. London Business School is quietly shifting from performative inclusion to what some faculty are calling “experiential inclusion” – the day‑to‑day reality of belonging. That work shows up in seemingly small but telling moves: rethinking case studies so protagonists come from Lagos as frequently enough as from London, reshaping group‑work norms so introverts aren’t drowned out by confident speakers, and challenging the unspoken dress codes and accents that still define what “professional” looks and sounds like. The goal is a campus culture where no one has to translate their identity into a safer, more palatable version just to get through a lecture or a networking event.
- Curriculum redesigned to reflect multiple cultures and lived experiences
- Faculty progress focused on bias‑aware teaching and assessment
- Student coalitions that co‑create policies,not just react to them
- Employer partnerships that pilot more inclusive recruitment practices
| From | To |
|---|---|
| Diversity as optics | Belonging as baseline |
| Fit the culture | Co‑create the culture |
| One “professional” mould | Many credible identities |
This reorientation has implications well beyond Regent’s Park. By treating the classroom as a live laboratory for inclusive leadership, the School is effectively beta‑testing practices that graduates will export into boardrooms, venture teams and public institutions. Recruiters are already being pushed to move past box‑ticking diversity drives towards environments where analysts can speak with their natural accent, consultants can reference non‑Western markets without over‑explaining, and LGBTQ+ employees don’t have to edit out their weekends on Monday mornings. In this model, business education becomes less about teaching people how to perform at work and more about equipping organisations to handle the full, unedited range of who their people actually are.
The Conclusion
As organisations grapple with hybrid schedules, shifting expectations and the relentless pace of change, the question of why we still struggle to be ourselves at work is more than a matter of personal comfort.It goes to the heart of how businesses attract talent, build trust and sustain performance in an uncertain world.
London Business School’s research underscores a simple but uncomfortable truth: encouraging authenticity is not a matter of slogans or one-off initiatives. It demands leaders who are willing to interrogate the unwritten rules of their cultures, to recognize which forms of difference are quietly penalised, and to accept that genuine inclusion may unsettle established ways of doing things.
The prize, though, is considerable. When people are able to align who they are with what they do, organisations gain access to fuller ideas, stronger commitment and more resilient teams. When they cannot, the costs show up in disengagement, attrition and a narrowing of perspective at precisely the moment when companies can least afford it.The challenge, then, is no longer to prove that authenticity matters. It is indeed to confront the gap between the identities companies say they welcome and those they actually reward-and to decide, consciously, what kind of workplace they are willing to build.
