Zac Chase

“We now speak, instead, of being “authentic,” a less moralistic term that refers to being real as opposed to false. Authenticity sounds good, but it isn’t necessarily a call to ethical action. An authentic leader—a creature much praised in business literature—is meant to be genuine, self-disciplined, self-aware, and values driven.53 Yet authenticity has nothing to do with virtue; one can be authentic and have good or bad values, just as one can be authentically good or bad. Until his conversion following the visitation of the three spirits, Scrooge was true to his own vision of himself as a “tight-fisted hand at the grindstone… hard and sharp as flint.” As Charles Dickens made clear, this total and utterly unapologetic allegiance to money was authentic, because it reflected his reality.54 But it didn’t make him a good person.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions