49 Authentic leadership can feel hard. Here’s how to show up with confidence

Authentic leadership can feel complicated, especially when expectations, visibility, and pressure all collide. In this episode of the Joyfully Unstoppable podcast, Becky Hamm breaks down what it really means to lead as yourself while maintaining credibility, clarity, and strong decision-making.

Drawing from real leadership experience, Becky explores why many women feel the need to “mask” at work and what that costs in energy, focus, and fulfillment. She walks through the practical mindset and leadership behaviors that support authentic leadership in complex environments, including how to navigate workplace dynamics, build trust with your team, and stay aligned with your values.

You will also hear a clear, grounded framework for showing up fully as yourself without oversharing, undermining your authority, or stepping outside professional boundaries. This is a conversation about leadership presence, decision quality, and creating an environment where both you and your team can perform at a high level.

If you want to strengthen your leadership while staying aligned with who you are, this episode will give you practical direction you can apply immediately.

What you will learn:

• Why authentic leadership can feel challenging in professional environments
• How workplace expectations shape the way women show up as leaders
• A practical way to think about bringing your full self into your role
• The difference between authenticity and lack of professionalism
• Five leadership practices that support authentic leadership and stronger team performance

Listen to the Joyfully Unstoppable podcast for grounded, practical insights that support confident, sustainable leadership.

#AuthenticLeadership #WomenWhoLead #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveLeadership #WomenInLeadership #LeadershipPodcast #JoyfullyUnstoppable #PodcastForWomen #LeadershipGrowth #WomenLeaders 

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Transcript

0:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you are leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead. Well join me each week for straight Talk, practical tips and a dash of encouragement. Hello my friends. I hope you were having a great day. Today we are talking about taking off the mask and showing up fully as yourself as a leader. And I know, I know this can be very scary. Many women wear masks in their professional lives. I mean, I expect men do too, but I coach women and so I know that a lot of y'all mask up before you go into the office every day. But look. That takes a lot of emotional self-regulation and mental energy, and I'm here to tell you that life is a whole lot better when you can put that energy toward the activities that move the needle on your strategic goals rather than trying to maintain some perfectly curated persona. And so let's talk about it. Let's start by talking about why women struggle showing up authentically, why they feel the need to keep this mask on at work. And so there are a few reasons one, we can struggle with balancing the vulnerability that comes with authenticity, with the authority that's necessary for us to be effective in leadership roles. We can struggle sharing our true selves, without appearing weak or incompetent. And have you heard of the double bind? There's research that shows that women are expected if we wanna be successful, and if we wanna, you know, have upward mobility in our careers, if we wanna promote and rise to the more senior ranks that we need to be seen as nice and warm and approachable. And we also need to be seen as competent as good at our job. And the double bind is the things we do to be seen as nice and warm. Undermines are being seen as competent. And the things that we do to be seen as competent, undermine are being seen as nice. And so, so it's a struggle, right? And this is particularly true if you are junior, if you are new to the organization, and so you don't come with a reputation, right? People are getting to know you for the first time. It's particularly true if you come from an underrepresented group. There are very real dangers to expressing vulnerability, even appropriate vulnerability that is good for the team. And there are very real dangers to showing up in a way that challenges cultural norms regarding a behavior, speech, appearance. And I am sorry to say that I have no clever hacks for how to overcome this. It sucks. I wish the world were different, but this is simply the reality we face today in 2026. I will say this though. The people who may judge you for how you speak or how you look, or if you express vulnerability, even appropriate vulnerability. I guarantee that they would find a reason to judge you anyway, right? Even when you mask up and show up and do everything right, some people just gonna judge.'cause some people are. Bad. I don't wanna get the explicit tag on this podcast. So I refrained from saying the word I was thinking. I think, you know, you can fill in the blank for me. So there are just some people who are just gonna judge you, condemn you'cause of all the junk that they carry it doesn't have one thing to do with you and you know that. So you might as well be who you are. Why pretzel yourself up? Why can torture yourself into something that ain't you when they're just gonna find a reason to tear India anyway?'cause.'cause it's who they are. Thing two, why it is hard for us to show up authentically is that a lot of us can struggle with the tension that exists between adapting to our organization and being real, right? Showing up fully, authentically as ourselves. And so I wanna clarify this because I'm gonna argue that this really is more of a misunderstanding of authenticity than it is, um, uh, difficulty with being authentic. There is a challenge here, but I think the challenge can be overblown. What do I mean by that? I mean. Even showing up authentically requires adapting to different situations. And so why we, we might feel this tension or this conflict between the desire to act completely according to our own personality and what is expected of a particular situation. And I'll just use myself as an example for this. I am naturally. A pretty informal person. People who know me, people who have worked with me in the past would tell you that I was in a very senior role, but I sure didn't act like it. I sure was approachable. I sure would just walk up to you and just talk. Not as the senior person, I was a Vice P President, but just as a person, person to person, right. We would just have conversations in meetings. I would ask what I thought were intelligent piercing questions, but I wasn't, I didn't walk in with this imposing kind of, I'm important vibe'cause that's not me that said. The informality, my natural informality, which is gonna be like jeans and a t-shirt like this, this top, if you're watching me on YouTube, like this is dressed up for me, right. But I wanna be professional in how I show up in my business. Me, I would be in a t-shirt or a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans or leggings or yoga pants. That's, that's, that's Mimi, right? But that doesn't play in every room at every moment. And so it took a little time. It took a little work for me to figure out how to read the room, how to understand the rooms that I was walking into so that I could show up appropriately while embodying the warmth and connection. That is very true to me. That is authentically. Me and so I wanna recommend this way of thinking about it. If this is something that has been hard for you, showing up authentically because you feel like you have to hide parts of yourself to, to be in your professional environment or, or whatever environment. Let me share this. This is how it makes sense for me. I will always show up fully as myself, but that is not all of me. So the Becky you meet on any given day is 100% Becky, I only show up with Becky at this point in my life. It wasn't always that way, but now at 50, you're getting a hundred percent Becky, but 100% Becky in any one moment is not 100% of who I am. Not because I'm hiding any particular part of me, but because there is a lot to me, right? I am a complex, multifaceted individual, and no one moment in time could ever capture all of me. The same is true of you. No one moment in time could ever capture all of you, so you can bring your full self. To work to an environment without bringing all of the pieces of you to that environment, right? You bring the pieces of you that align with the experience that you're having. Now, having said that, there is a point where the tension can become untenable. If you can't find a way to be present in the moment to be present at work and still be 100% you, that could be a sign that you're not able to show up authentically in that context, right? That you are in the wrong room. You might be in the wrong organization, and I'm sorry that's, that's not fun. I apologize, but. But that could be the case. How would you know that? Well, maybe your personal values are inconsistent with your organization's values, right? Maybe it's just a, a values mismatch. Maybe to circle back to that first point, maybe it's not safe to show up for yourself for whatever reason, there are either enough people or people in strategic positions who are gonna find some reason to be dissatisfied with you no matter what you do or how you show up. So you can't show up fully as yourself. Maybe it is the case that when you are adapting to the moment, when you are showing up in the context. It requires you to sacrifice some non-negotiable part of yourself. And so either because of the values mismatched or because it's not safe to show up or because showing up means that you have to sacrifice some core part of you. Now you've moved into the realm of behaving inauthentically, and if that's the case, well then you have a decision to make about whether it's time to find a role where you can show up authentically. And as always my friends, you don't have to struggle through this alone if you are feeling like that could be true for you. Shoot me a dm I'm at Women Lead Well, on Instagram or you can find Women Lead Well, on LinkedIn or on LinkedIn. I think. I'm Rebecca Johnson Hamm on LinkedIn. Just shoot me a note. Let's jump on a Zoom call and have a conversation about it. You don't have to figure this all out by yourself. It's a really crummy feeling to have, and so let's move towards something that would be better for you. Okay. Third reason why it can be hard for women to show up authentically. Women can struggle to show up authentically. When they confuse authenticity with a lack of professionalism, and I'm certain this is no one who is listening to this podcast, what do I mean? I mean, you might be sharing it too much confidential or discreet or emotional information. What would be an example of that? Well, let's say you're new to a role. You walk in and you say, well, I don't know if I'm cut out for this role, or, oh wow, I don't know that I can do this. To your brand new team who is sitting there waiting to welcome you with open arms. Yeah, it's never a good idea to induce panic with your team. It could be you say something like, oh, well, you know, leadership is leaning in X direction before leadership has actually made a decision about what direction they're leaning, right? You don't wanna be spill in predecisional, right? That's just a lack of discretion and like a hundred percent of the time that's gonna come back to bite you. So don't ever do that. I mean, using the claim of authenticity to resist feedback or personal growth, you say, well, I'm just passionate about our performance. And you say that to like, excuse yelling at a team member for messing something up. Right? Or I just call it like, I see it as a, a way to wave off any. Responsibility for toxic leadership. Yeah, it's not you being authentic, it's you being a Jackalope and you should stop it. And again, I'm sure that's not any of you, my dear sweet listeners, but I think you've probably seen it somewhere. So, okay, so authentic leadership can be hard. Maybe you still wanna. Show up, take the mask off, show up fully as yourself. How do you do it? Okay, well, I'm gonna give you five steps. The first, shockingly, is self-awareness, understanding your strengths, your weaknesses, your core values. And realizing how your behavior is impacting others. This helps you refine how you can show up authentically and appropriately in different scenarios. It also helps you understand how you can hold space for your team to do the same. Because authentic leadership, it's not just about you behaving authentically or showing up authentically. It's about you creating space and protecting space for your team to show up authentically. Otherwise, you're just being selfish, right? Thing two that you can do is this very fancy term that's actually pretty straightforward. It's the idea of relational transparency. That means that you present your true self to others. Again, you show up 100% as yourself, though it might not be 100% of you because again, you're complex, you're multifaceted. You can't constrain all of you to one moment in time, but you show up fully as yourself. Sharing appropriate information openly. You don't gatekeep and being honest about the mistakes that you've made. Not an A, oh, I'm terrible. Look at me. I don't know how I got picked for this job, but in an effort to promote learning and. And again, because it's not just about you being authentic, it's about your team members feeling safe, showing up authentically as well, because it really does bring out your best work. Well, when you show up and own your mistakes and demonstrate how you're learning from them, you are signaling to your team that they can do that too. So you then have to back that up by not attacking them for their failures. If they talk about how they're learning from their mistakes, you have to encourage that growth and that learning and that improvement. But when you do that, you build trust, you build safety, you build fulfillment. And what does the research tell us? The research is crystal clear. That employees who feel like they can trust their leadership and who feel trusted by their leadership, the employees who feel safe, the employees who feel fulfilled, they perform at a higher level. They get better results and they stay longer. You improve your retention, which saves the organization money'cause you're not trying to hire and onboard and get up to speed. So that's two, three is another fancy term, but it means something pretty straightforward and that is balanced processing. What is balanced processing? Well, it's that you don't make your decisions emotionally. Not that you would, but this is just what the concept says. But you solicit information, solicit input from others, that you analyze the data objectively, that you consider multiple perspectives before making decisions. Why is this important for authentic leadership? Because if you are an authentic leader, as I've said before, it is not just your authenticity that matters, your team's authentic perspectives and judgements matter too. And again, the research is crystal clear on this. When you take in different perspectives and opinions and ideas. It improves decision making, you get stronger outcomes. The companies that do that are more profitable in the long run, in the short run too. So it's a win-win. You get to show up fully as yourself, your team gets to show up fully as themselves, and that informs decision making, which improves outcomes. Four, we've talked about this a little bit already, this internalized moral perspective. What do I mean? I mean that when you show up authentically, you are showing up aligned with your core values and your ethical standards even under pressure. And so the self-awareness of knowing what those core values are critical for this. If you need help, of course you can always download my free values clarification exercise on the women lead well.net. Website. Um, it's just under the free resources tab. And then finally, vulnerability and humility. Of course, appropriate vulnerability. Always you don't vomit your insecurities out on your team, but admitting mistakes, accepting that you're not perfect all of, and allowing your team members holding space. Safe, safe space for your team members to do the same. That just encourages trust and growth. It just does. Try it. You will see. If you don't believe me, just try it yourself. The data is compelling, but don't believe the data. Just try it and see. Now I would love to know where you currently feel comfortable showing up authentically. And where you feel like you have the most room to grow. Just DM me. Women Lead well on Instagram. I would love to hear how this episode is landing for you. I have found the more authentically I show up. At work, but also just in my personal life, the more fulfilled I am, the more grounded I am, the more productive I am, and the better my outcomes are. And so I would love, if this is something that you haven't spent a lot of time thinking about or something that you have been struggling with, I would love to hear how this episode sits with you. And I hope that you'll join me next week when we're gonna be talking about the systems you need to have in place as an effective leader. You won't wanna miss it. Now if today's episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. And if you could leave a review, I would really appreciate it. And don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter where I go into greater depth than what I'm able to provide in a 20 minute podcast. I talked about a lot of studies and research. Demonstrating different parts of the, the conversation today on authenticity about how increased trust, increased performance, and how, uh, diversity of perspectives improves outcomes. I link all of that in the newsletter so that if you wanna dive deep and look into it, you can, every once in a while I share something that's going on in my personal life. And then subscribers also receive early access to any new programs that are launching. If it sounds like that would interest you, you can join at womenleadwell.net/newsletter. remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm and this is joyfully unstoppable.