What we ask of authenticity: How LGBQ experiences illuminate the possibilities, constraints, and expectations of being an authentic leader

Abstract

This essay draws on ethnographic work with minority leaders to problematize the reification of how people with privilege experience authenticity on the one hand, and the romanticization of authentic leadership on the other. Whilst the literature on authentic leadership critically engages the concept of authenticity itself, research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBQ) leadership offers empirical insights from the lived experiences of minority leaders. Drawing on both literatures, this essay addresses the challenge of critically engaging minority individuals’ accounts of their lived experiences relating to authentic leadership. The diverse LGBQ people in leadership roles in this UK study articulated struggles around being their “true selves” in leadership roles, as both bodies of literature suggest. Their accounts also raise concerns about how others romanticized LGBQ authenticity, creating expectations about how these minority individuals would perform authenticity for the sake of diversity, inclusion, and transformation. LGBQ leaders seem to develop a pragmatic sense about how and when they do or do not bring their sexualities into their leadership roles. In conclusion, this essay argues for an acknowledgment of how sexuality impacts the conditions for enacting authentic leadership whilst resisting the romanticism of authenticity for the sake of organization goals.