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Within the initial chapters of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, speaker Burey poses a challenge: commonplace directives to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a combination of personal stories, investigation, cultural commentary and interviews – attempts to expose how businesses appropriate personal identity, shifting the weight of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The impetus for the publication originates in part in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across business retail, new companies and in worldwide progress, viewed through her experience as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that the author encounters – a push and pull between asserting oneself and looking for safety – is the driving force of her work.

It arrives at a period of general weariness with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts increase, and numerous companies are reducing the very systems that earlier assured progress and development. The author steps into that terrain to contend that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the organizational speech that trivializes identity as a collection of surface traits, quirks and interests, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Display of Identity

Via vivid anecdotes and conversations, Burey shows how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, disabled individuals – soon understand to calibrate which identity will “pass”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by attempting to look palatable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which all manner of assumptions are projected: emotional work, sharing personal information and continuous act of gratitude. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the defenses or the trust to survive what emerges.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the trust to withstand what comes out.’

Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey

She illustrates this situation through the account of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to inform his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – a behavior of transparency the organization often applauds as “sincerity” – briefly made daily interactions easier. However, Burey points out, that progress was fragile. Once staff turnover eliminated the casual awareness Jason had built, the environment of accessibility vanished. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the exhaustion of having to start over, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be asked to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a structure that applauds your honesty but declines to codify it into policy. Genuineness becomes a snare when companies rely on employee revelation rather than organizational responsibility.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once clear and poetic. She blends academic thoroughness with a tone of solidarity: a call for readers to engage, to challenge, to disagree. According to the author, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the effort of opposing uniformity in workplaces that require appreciation for simple belonging. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the accounts institutions describe about equity and acceptance, and to reject engagement in customs that maintain inequity. It may appear as naming bias in a discussion, withdrawing of unpaid “equity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the company. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an assertion of self-respect in environments that frequently encourage conformity. It is a discipline of principle rather than defiance, a approach of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not based on institutional approval.

Redefining Genuineness

Burey also rejects rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not simply toss out “sincerity” entirely: on the contrary, she calls for its reclamation. According to the author, genuineness is not simply the raw display of individuality that business environment typically applauds, but a more thoughtful alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a honesty that rejects manipulation by organizational requirements. Rather than viewing authenticity as a requirement to reveal too much or conform to sterilized models of openness, the author encourages followers to keep the aspects of it grounded in truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the goal is not to abandon authenticity but to move it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and toward connections and offices where trust, fairness and accountability make {