I can tell within two sentences if ChatGPT wrote your email.
It sounds like every other one I’ve read today. Professionally mediocre. Perfectly bland tone. Strategic use of “leverage.” Transitions so smooth they may as well …
Spend enough time in corporate America, and somewhere along the line you’ll hear the refrain: Bring your whole self to work. It’s become the mantra of modern management—printed on culture decks, repeated in leadership off-sites, and embedded in HR rhetoric.
The idea traces back to management thinker and author Frederic Laloux, a former associate partner at McKinsey & Company, who argued that the most progressive organizations invite employees to show up fully. Not as cogs in the machine, but as the complex and multifaceted humans we are.
We invited Eric Solomon on the From the Culture podcast, where the PhD-trained cognitive psychologist who’s led research for YouTube, Spotify, and Google explored this idea further—the benefits and unintended consequences of it all.
The promise of bringing your “whole self” to work is simple: When people are free to be themselves, extraordinary things happen. To that end, Solomon provides a compelling case study. A self-proclaimed “dork” who grew up in NYC and became a DJ, Solomon brought his understanding of humanity, skills as a communicator, technical know-how, and love for music to work—which enabled him to build Spotify’s brand architecture and launch the company’s super popular Wrapped annual campaign. Not bad, right?
The intersection of his “full self” unlocked an opportunity that might not have been available to “Eric Solomon the psychologist and tech guy” alone. The DJ in him provided an understanding that his “work self” likely would have missed. And that’s the promise of bringing your “whole self to work”: When people are free to be themselves, extraordinary things happen. However, this also opens the floodgates to the rest of our whole selves that may not seem so congruent with the actual work.
The Problem With “Whole Self”
While Solomon was making breakthroughs at Spotify, he was also dealing with the traumatic loss of his father and all the accompanying grief that spilled over into his work. The grief, the anguish, and the inability to manage it all naturally seeped into his work life and made work a challenge, despite his many successes. That’s just a natural consequence of life, right? Our full selves have to deal with all the intricacies of life—some good and some bad. Consequently, when we bring our full selves to work, we’re bringing all of that with us.
Is this the “whole self” that Laloux advocated for? I’m not so sure. The organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has famously pushed back on the “whole self” narrative. He argues that we shouldn’t bring our whole selves to work because many of us are still figuring ourselves out. We’re carrying unresolved grief. Unprocessed experiences. Unrealized anxiety. The unfiltered authenticity of our full selves can potentially spark chaos in the office rather than creativity and connection. So, perhaps it’s best that we separate the two: our work selves and our personal selves. But now we have the plot of Apple TV’s hit show Severance, and surely, that’s not the reality we want either.
The Myth of Separation
In the dystopian world of Severance, employees undergo a surgical procedure that divides their memories between work life and personal life. The result? An “innie” self that only exists within the office walls, and an “outtie” self that carries on in the outside world, completely unaware of their work life. And never the twain shall meet. As far-fetched as this work of fiction may seem, it’s not as far removed from our work reality as we might think.
Many of us have become masters at compartmentalizing our lives—creating distinct personas for work and home. We put on our “professional” self when we clock into the office, leaving our personal lives at the door and switching on our “innie” selves. A LinkedIn version and a living-room version. A boardroom persona and a weekend human. But here’s the thing: We don’t have a “work self” and a “home self”—we just have a “self.” Any attempt to sever the two is not only fiction, but it also robs our work of the depth, creativity, and innovation that comes from our whole selves.
The modern workplace loves the phrase “bring your whole self to work,” yet it resists the interrogation of the conditions underneath it. Wholeness. Bringing your whole self assumes something important: that you actually have a whole self to bring. Often, we don’t. You can’t bring your whole self if you’re not working toward wholeness. And that’s where the deeper human work comes in. Grief. Reflection. Identity. These aren’t distractions from professional life. They’re the raw materials that shape it.
In our conversation with Solomon, one theme surfaced repeatedly: Organizations are asking more of leaders than ever before while giving them fewer structures for growth and support. The result? Lonely leaders. Burned-out managers. Fragmented identities. People trying to operate like severed halves of themselves.
The Real Opportunity
So, what’s the alternative? It’s not about separation of self or switching on and off, but about integration. Realizing that the person who shows up in the meeting should be recognizably the same human who shows up at the dinner table. Not identical, but coherent. The truth is, we never separate the two; we negotiate which parts of ourselves show up. We toggle between identities the way a DJ toggles between records or a producer mixes a song—boosting some frequencies while muting others. Sometimes the polished professional appears. Sometimes the complicated human leaks through. Embracing this truth is the reality in which we should engage.
When we do this work—striving for wholeness while simultaneously creating environments that support it—that’s when extraordinary things happen. We unlock levels of creativity, empathy, and innovation that simply aren’t possible when we’re operating as fragmented versions of ourselves. So, let’s retire the notion of leaving part of ourselves at home when we go to work. Instead, let’s focus on becoming more whole and more integrated individuals, while creating workplaces that not only allow but encourage us to be us. After all, we’re not just employees; we’re humans. And it’s about time our workplaces reflect that reality.
The steady encroachment of email into all moments of life has been quiet but formidable. A quick glance during a first date. Surreptitiously tapping out a reply during a wedding ceremony. Some even admit to refreshing their inbox at a funeral.
Ofte…
Whatever your take on humanity, it is hard to deny one fact: we are, as a species, more hypocritical than we think, and tend to display a curious tendency for holding strong moral principles on one hand, and disregarding them without much guilt or awareness on the other. Unlike humans, a penguin does not preach fidelity in the morning and download Tinder by lunch. A meerkat on guard does not issue a memo on teamwork before sneaking off duty. A wolf does not publish a servant-leadership manifesto before stealing the kill.
Across history, human moral systems have shared a curious pattern: the stricter the rulebook, the richer the archive of exceptions. Religions preach chastity and accumulate scandals, empires proclaim justice and practice conquest, corporations enshrine “values” and reward results at any cost. The problem is not that moral codes are useless. It is that they are aspirational reminders, not accurate descriptions, let alone regulators, of human behavior.
This does not mean morality is pointless. It means it is political, social, and psychological. Moral systems are our best attempt at creating coordination tools. They tell groups what behavior to reward and punish. They create identity and belonging. But they also create loopholes, status games, and rationalizations. As Oscar Wilde (half) joked, “I can resist everything except temptation.” He was mocking Victorian hypocrisy, but the joke lands because it is universal. Strong rules make transgression more visible, more tempting, and sometimes more creative.
The lesson for leaders is uncomfortable. As Alison Taylor shows in her brilliant book on business ethics, the louder an organization proclaims its values, the more scrutiny it deserves. Integrity is not measured by mission statements, sermons, or training modules. It is measured by incentives, peer judgments, and what happens when nobody is watching. Put plainly: moral codes are easy to write, hard to live, and endlessly adaptable when power or profit is at stake.
Cutting corners
A perfect example of this tension is the almost universal command to “be nice” or “do good.” Every major moral system treats prosocial behavior as a foundational rule. Christianity elevates charity and turning the other cheek. Islam centers zakat and the duty of generosity. Judaism embeds tzedakah as an ethical obligation. Buddhism praises compassion as a path to enlightenment. Secular humanism celebrates kindness as the glue of social trust. In short, niceness is civilization’s default setting.
Yet there is no shortage of cases where breaking that rule pays off, especially when everyone else keeps following it. If your competitors are honest, cutting corners is profitable. If your colleagues are cooperative, taking credit is rewarded. If your peers are polite, being assertive looks like leadership. Morality works best as a collective norm, but incentives often reward individual deviation.
Do nice guys finish last?
Organizational psychology has documented this uncomfortable reality for years. Timothy Judge and colleagues asked the wonderfully blunt question, “Do nice guys finish last?” Their work showed that agreeableness, the Big Five trait capturing kindness, trust, and cooperativeness, is either weakly related or even negatively related to income and career advancement in many contexts. In another meta-analysis on leadership and personality, Judge found that agreeableness is positively related to leadership effectiveness once someone is in charge, but negatively related to leadership emergence. In other words, agreeable people make better leaders, but disagreeable people are more likely to become leaders.
Add to this the literature on the so-called dark side traits. Narcissism predicts confidence and visibility. Machiavellianism predicts political skill. Subclinical psychopathy predicts risk tolerance and emotional detachment. None of these traits is desirable in excess, but moderate levels can help individuals navigate competitive hierarchies. As I argued in Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?, narcissistic overconfidence tends to beat competence when selection processes reward self-promotion over actual talent and integrity.
Evolutionary psychology offers a deeper explanation. Human groups survive through cooperation, but individuals can gain short term advantages by free riding on others’ goodwill. If everyone contributes to the public good except you, you still benefit. This creates a permanent tension between what is good for the individual and what is good for the group. Altruism evolves through mechanisms like kin selection, reciprocity, and group selection, but so do strategies for exploiting altruists. Moral systems try to suppress free riding through norms and punishment, yet the incentives never fully disappear.
Noble and naive
So the injunction to “be nice” is both noble and naïve. It keeps societies functioning, but it does not guarantee personal success. The hidden career cost of excessive agreeableness is that systems reward those who are just cooperative enough to belong, and just selfish enough to win. The challenge for leaders is not to abandon morality, but to align incentives so that doing good is also good business. Otherwise, the nicest people keep doing the right thing while the boldest rule breakers keep getting promoted. In fact, the very purpose of leadership, especially at the institutional and societal level, is to regulate the natural tension between our desire to get ahead of others, with our need to get along with them.
There is another wrinkle. Even niceness itself can be gamed. Societies that genuinely reward kindness often become vulnerable to those who merely perform it. In my book Don’t Be Yourself, I argued that our cultural obsession with authenticity reflects a collective fatigue with impostors who signal virtue without practicing it. When voters swing toward aggressive, combative outsiders, it is often less because they admire rudeness than because they have lost trust in polished insiders whose niceness felt rehearsed rather than real.
Still, humans are ultimately pragmatic. Most of us prefer a colleague who is politely insincere to one who is sincerely hostile, at least when we are on the receiving end of their behavior. Courtesy lubricates the wheels of cooperation. Emotional labor, as author Rose Hackman shows, can be an underrated professional skill. But there is a limit. If politeness becomes flattery, if kindness becomes manipulation, if authenticity is replaced by theatrical virtue, reputations collapse. People are remarkably sensitive to exaggeration, ingratiation, and inconsistency, and once labeled a phony, it is hard to recover.
Balancing act
The real balancing act is therefore subtle. You need enough kindness to be trusted, enough honesty to be credible, enough self-interest to survive, and enough integrity (including the smallest possible gap between what you say and what you do) to be predictable and safe in the eyes of others. Above all, people want to know what you will do when incentives change. They may forgive flaws, bluntness, or even occasional selfishness if they believe, on balance, that you have their interests in mind. What they rarely forgive is the opposite: being showered with pleasant words while quietly feeling exposed to betrayal.
Trust, in other words, is less about being perfectly nice and more about being reliably decent. And that, as both moral philosophy and organizational psychology keep reminding us, is harder than it sounds.
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Despite decades of scientific research, incredible advances in deep analytics and AI, and no shortage of good intentions, many organizations still struggle to select and develop the leaders they need to navigate increasingly complex and unpredictable business challenges. Markets are volatile, uncertainty is constant, and leadership quality matters more than ever. Yet many firms still fail to identify and elevate the best (or at least right) leadership talent available.
Contrary to what many people think, more often than not, the problem is not a shortage of capable leaders. Rather, it is a failure of the systems designed to identify, develop, and advance them, which simultaneously results in selecting and investing in the wrong candidates, with tragic consequences for organizations.
Consider a glaring example: women. For several years now, women have represented more than half of the workforce in most advanced economies. They also outperform men in higher education across the OECD, earning the majority of university and postgraduate degrees. In many countries, women also achieve higher average grades and completion rates.
Research further shows that women tend, on average, to score higher on several of the leadership capabilities organizations claim to value most. These include emotional intelligence, self-awareness, collaboration, and integrity, and they have proven links to stronger leadership performance. Women are also less likely to display certain “dark side” personality traits such as narcissism, impulsivity, and excessive risk-taking, characteristics that are frequently associated with destructive leadership.
And yet, paradoxically, as careers progress, the leadership pipeline narrows dramatically in favor of men. Across most industries and regions, women remain significantly underrepresented in executive roles, board positions, and CEO seats. The economic implications are considerable. Various estimates suggest that narrowing gender gaps in leadership participation could add trillions of dollars to global GDP. Even for those who approach the issue purely from a commercial perspective, the cost of underutilized leadership talent is difficult to ignore.
Leading with science
One obvious way to address this paradox is to align leadership selection and development with science-based approaches, using data and evidence to select on leadership potential and develop the right leadership qualities so that performance actually increases and leadership talent improves.
If organizations adopted more rigorous, evidence-based approaches to identifying and developing leadership talent, two outcomes would likely follow simultaneously. The overall quality of leadership would improve, and the proportion of women in senior roles would rise. In other words, better systems would produce both stronger leaders and more balanced gender outcomes.
A science-based approach to leadership would also address the current lack of enthusiasm for many traditional diversity initiatives over recent years. Too often, such popular initiatives emphasize good intentions rather than measurable results. For instance, programs designed to encourage women to “lean in,” be more confident, network more strategically, or emulate traditionally male leadership styles may offer useful advice in some contexts.
But these approaches focus on adapting individuals to flawed systems rather than improving the systems themselves. In a meritocratic environment with systems designed to accurately detect leadership potential, there is surely no need to teach people (women or men) to self-promote, manage up, take credit for others’ achievements, and become successful corporate politicians. Similarly, workshops on unconscious bias or well-meaning diversity pledges may raise awareness without meaningfully changing how organizations identify and promote leadership talent.
So, what would a science-based approach look like?
1. Make selection gender-blind (focus on talent, not gender)
Many diversity initiatives begin with targets rather than diagnoses. Organizations decide they want more women in leadership roles and then design programs intended to move the numbers.
The difficulty is that the underlying systems used to identify leadership talent often remain unchanged.
Promotion decisions in many organizations still rely heavily on informal nominations, personal sponsorship, subjective impressions, and traditional archetypes of leadership. These processes tend to reward visibility, confidence, and political fluency rather than actual leadership effectiveness. When talent identification depends on intuition or familiarity, leaders tend to select people who resemble those already in power.
A more effective alternative is to remove gender from the equation altogether and focus instead on measuring leadership potential and performance with scientific rigor. Decades of research in organizational psychology show that structured, evidence-based assessments are far better predictors of leadership effectiveness than intuition or informal recommendations. Validated psychometric assessments, structured interviews, behavioral simulations, and performance analytics provide a far more reliable signal of who actually has the capabilities required to lead.
Today, advances in data science, analytics, and (well-designed and validated) AI make it possible to take this approach even further. Organizations can analyze large datasets on performance, leadership behaviors, decision patterns, team outcomes, and career trajectories to identify the attributes that truly predict leadership success. When these models are applied consistently and objectively, they reduce reliance on subjective judgments that often distort talent decisions.
In effect, this approach creates a gender-blind evaluation of leadership potential.
The outcome is not only fairer but also more effective. When organizations measure leadership talent rigorously rather than relying on human intuition, two things tend to happen simultaneously: leadership performance improves, and the candidate pool becomes more balanced.
An analogy can be found in professional sports scouting. Teams that rely on reputation and instinct frequently overlook high-performing athletes. Teams that rely on objective performance metrics often uncover talent others missed. Leadership pipelines operate in much the same way. To be more specific, if men and women do not differ meaningfully in leadership potential, the solution is not to “fix” one group or train individuals to mimic traditional leadership stereotypes. The solution is to improve the systems used to identify leadership talent in the first place, irrespective of gender.
2. Measure ROI and impact
Another common mistake is treating diversity initiatives as symbolic commitments rather than operational experiments. Organizations frequently introduce mentoring programs, leadership accelerators, or training initiatives designed to support women. Yet, they rarely measure whether those programs actually improve leadership outcomes. In most areas of business, initiatives that fail to produce measurable impact are quickly reassessed. Diversity initiatives should be subject to the same discipline.
A more effective approach is to treat these programs like strategic investments. Track outcomes such as promotion rates, leadership performance scores, employee engagement, retention, and business results. In other words, evaluate whether interventions improve leadership quality, not just representation. When organizations measure outcomes rigorously, two things tend to happen. Ineffective initiatives are identified and discontinued, while successful ones can be expanded and refined.
In short, evidence replaces ideology, science replaces intuition.
3. Remove structural barriers
Identifying leadership talent is only half the battle. Even the most rigorous selection systems will fail if the environment into which leaders are promoted contains structural barriers that distort how performance is evaluated and rewarded.
In other words, attracting capable candidates or selecting individuals with genuine leadership potential is pointless if the evaluation system itself is biased, or if the organizational context prevents people’s talents from being fully expressed.
Many such barriers are not deliberate or visible. They tend to emerge from the way organizations measure success, assess reputation, or distribute opportunities.
Consider a few common examples. Research has shown that identical leadership behaviors are often interpreted differently depending on who displays them. Assertiveness in men may be described as confidence, while the same behavior in women may be labeled abrasive or aggressive. Similarly, collaborative leadership styles may be undervalued in environments that equate leadership with dominance or visibility.
Another source of distortion comes from reliance on reputation-based evaluation systems. Leaders are often promoted based on perceived status, visibility with senior executives, or informal sponsorship networks. These mechanisms tend to favor individuals who resemble those already in power, while disadvantaging unconventional candidates or those operating outside dominant networks.
In addition, traditional performance metrics may capture outputs without adequately measuring the value leaders actually create. For instance, individuals who inherit high-performing teams or favorable market conditions may appear more successful than leaders who quietly transform underperforming units. When organizations evaluate outcomes without accounting for context, they risk rewarding circumstance rather than capability.
This is where scientific approaches and modern data tools can help. Advanced analytics and AI allow organizations to examine performance data at a much deeper level than traditional evaluations permit. Instead of relying primarily on reputation or visibility, organizations can analyze how leaders influence measurable outcomes: improvements in team performance, retention, innovation, decision quality, or long-term value creation.
These tools can also detect systematic biases embedded in evaluation systems. By analyzing patterns in performance reviews, promotion decisions, and feedback language, organizations can identify whether certain groups consistently receive different types of evaluations, slower career progression, or narrower development opportunities.
Equally important, data-driven approaches allow organizations to move beyond measuring success as a static outcome and toward measuring value added.
For example, rather than simply rewarding the leader of the highest-performing business unit, organizations can examine how much improvement that leader generated relative to where the team started. Instead of evaluating managers solely on revenue or output, companies can analyze the extent to which they improved employee engagement, reduced turnover, strengthened collaboration, or accelerated innovation.
When evaluation systems focus on value created rather than status accumulated, leadership assessments become both fairer and more predictive. Technology, often viewed as a potential source of bias, can therefore become an important tool for reducing it. When combined with scientific measurement and transparent metrics, data-driven evaluation systems help ensure that leadership advancement reflects genuine capability rather than familiarity, reputation, or historical advantage.
In short, identifying talent is essential. But removing the structural barriers that obscure and constrain that talent is what ultimately allows it to flourish.
4. Redesign succession systems
Leadership pipelines are shaped not only by evaluation systems but also by succession processes. Too often, succession systems are designed to preserve the status quo. They unintentionally favor candidates who resemble existing leaders or who followed traditional career paths. If organizations want to broaden leadership pipelines, they must rethink how those systems operate.
First, they need to create more pathways to the top. High-potential leaders should gain enterprise-level experience earlier in their careers. Many women, particularly those coming from functional roles such as HR, legal, or marketing, are less likely to receive early P&L responsibility or cross-enterprise assignments. Without those experiences they may later be perceived as lacking the experience required for senior roles. Deliberately assigning stretch roles earlier helps develop enterprise leadership capability and expands the pool of future executives.
Second, succession processes should default to inclusion rather than self-selection. Research suggests that men are somewhat more likely to assume they are ready for senior roles, while women may wait to be invited. When succession requires individuals to nominate themselves, this dynamic can unintentionally reinforce the gap.
When qualified leaders are automatically considered for succession pipelines, organizations signal that a broader group of individuals is seen as potential leadership talent.
Third, organizations should make the informal rules of leadership advancement more transparent. Many talented leaders do not lack capability; they lack access to the unwritten norms that influence leadership selection.
Mentorship can help bridge this gap by making these norms visible.
5. Embrace cognitive diversity
Another effective way to improve gender diversity and leadership talent is to focus on something broader: cognitive diversity.
Cognitive diversity refers to the range of thinking styles, perspectives, skills, and values that individuals bring to decision-making. Teams composed entirely of people with similar backgrounds and temperaments often fall prey to groupthink. By contrast, teams that incorporate a wider variety of perspectives are better able to challenge assumptions, identify blind spots, and improve the quality of decisions.
Importantly, cognitive diversity often leads naturally to demographic diversity. When organizations deliberately assemble teams with varied perspectives, leadership styles, and problem-solving approaches, gender balance and other forms of diversity frequently follow.
Some people argue that emphasizing cognitive diversity is merely a way of sidestepping demographic diversity. In reality, the logic runs in the opposite direction. One of the main reasons organizations value gender diversity in the first place is precisely because individuals with different backgrounds and life experiences tend to bring different ways of thinking. The purpose of diversity is not simply representation, but the broader range of perspectives that improves judgment and decision quality.
Rather than treating diversity as a compliance objective, organizations should therefore treat it as a strategy for improving organizational effectiveness, innovation, and long-term performance.
6. Treat leadership development as a continuous system (rather than a one off treat)
Finally, organizations must recognize that leadership development is continuous rather than episodic. No single workshop, mentoring program, or leadership course produces a CEO. Leadership capability develops over time through repeated stretch experiences, feedback, and reflection.
Efforts fail when they are treated as isolated initiatives. They succeed when development is embedded in the broader system through which talent is identified, developed, and advanced. Organizations that make meaningful progress approach leadership development the way engineers optimize complex systems: they introduce changes, measure outcomes, refine their approach, and repeat. Like with compound interest rates, small improvements accumulate over time.
From intentions to outcomes
Discussions about gender diversity often drift into predictable camps. Some frame the issue primarily as one of fairness or representation, while others dismiss many diversity initiatives as symbolic gestures that achieve little in practice. Both positions, however, tend to overlook a simpler and more practical point.
Organizations perform better when they are able to identify, develop, and deploy the best leadership talent available. If a significant portion of that talent remains overlooked or underutilized, the system is not working as intended. The cost is not only social or reputational. It is operational. Seen from this perspective, improving gender diversity is less about correcting outcomes directly and more about improving the systems that generate those outcomes in the first place.
Paradoxically, one of the most effective ways to achieve more balanced leadership may be to focus less on gender itself and more on the quality of leadership selection and development. Measure talent with greater precision. Evaluate interventions with evidence rather than aspiration. Remove structural barriers that distort how performance is judged. Broaden pathways into leadership roles. And design teams that benefit from genuine diversity of thinking.
When leadership systems become more objective, data-driven, and evidence-based, two things tend to happen at once: leadership quality improves and representation becomes more balanced, not just in terms of gender, but also in terms of cognitive diversity.
In the end, intentions matter far less than system design. Organizations rarely get the leaders they hope for. They get the leaders their systems are built to produce.
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