This month I traveled to New Jersey for the first time — I loved it and learned a lot!

I shared a lighter version of the trip on LinkedIn, but the truth is, one word followed me everywhere I went: authenticity.

It showed up in casual conversations.It showed up during leadership professional development. And it stayed with me long after I got on the plane home. Over dinner one night, someone asked me: “What are you?”

Coming from the Midwest, my mind immediately went somewhere deeper than intended. Faith? Values? Life story? But that wasn’t what they meant. They were asking about roots. Heritage. Origin. Percent Italian. Percent Irish. A shared understanding that knowing who you are—and where you come from—matters. At the time, it felt like a cultural difference. In hindsight, it was something more. It was about identity.

Later in the trip, when presenting to leaders, authenticity came up again—this time explicitly. We were talking about what actually builds trust in leadership. What people experience when leadership is working well. Authenticity surfaced quickly. But what made the conversation powerful was how fast the group clarified what authenticity is not. 

One leader said it plainly: “Being an authentic leader doesn’t give you license to be a jerk.” Heads nodded around the room. Because everyone has seen that mistake before. Somewhere along the way, “be authentic” got watered down into:

• Say whatever you think

• Don’t change

• Don’t worry about impact—this is just who I am

But that’s not authenticity. And leaders know it instinctively. That moment during the session made something click for me: Authenticity is much deeper than communication style.

So when I got home, I went back to the research—and what I found helped me make sense of everything I’d experienced that week.

At its core, authenticity in leadership isn’t a personality trait or a behavior you turn on. It’s the outcome of alignment. In the research, authenticity consistently shows up as emerging from five connected elements:

1. Meaning – knowing why you lead and what truly matters to you

2. Values – clarifying the principles you’re not willing to trade away

3. Alignment – ensuring your role, decisions, and behavior actually reflect those values

4. Reflection – regularly checking whether you’re drifting, growing, or misaligned

5. Authentic Expression – how all of that shows up in your communication and presence

That comment—“you can’t be a jerk”—lands squarely in the middle of this model. Because authenticity without alignment isn’t authenticity at all. It’s self-indulgence. If a leader says, “This is just who I am,” but their behavior consistently erodes trust, dismisses others, or contradicts their stated values, people don’t experience that as authentic. They experience it as misaligned.

True authenticity requires discipline. It requires care for impact, not just intent. And it requires leaders to adapt how they show up without abandoning who they are.That’s why alignment matters so much. It’s what connects identity to behavior

Trust in leadership is fragile. Burnout is high. And people are far more sensitive to whether leadership feels real or performative—especially in today’s environment. The research is clear: When leaders are grounded in meaning, clear on values, aligned in behavior, reflective over time, and consistent in how they show up, trust grows. When any of those elements break down, authenticity does too.

Authenticity isn’t a license to stop growing. It’s not permission to be careless. And it’s not something you perform. It’s something that emerges—when meaning, values, alignment, reflection, and expression all move in the same direction.

The beginning of the year has a way of inviting us to think about goals and priorities. But maybe the better leadership question is this: Do the people I lead experience alignment between who I am and how I show up?