"The key is to back up what you say with actions." It sounds like you're describing someone who over-promises and under-delivers. Or manipulates. The article

"The key is to back up what you say with actions." It sounds like you're describing someone who over-promises and under-delivers. Or manipulates. The article is talking about someone who shifts social interaction styles depending on who they're talking to. There might be some reason to bucket those things together because they both fall under the umbrella of being a people pleaser. But they're separable aspects of interaction. In my own experience, people don't actually want other people to be authentic. They want people to simultaneously be a personality type they already like (or, in work environments, expect), and exude an aura of authenticity. I've acted exactly what comes naturally to me in the past, and after hearing through the grapevine what people thought of me realized I can never be myself at work. Over the course of one meeting, I came across as a "turbo-autist" to one person, and a "brogrammer douche" to someone from a different team. Now I give people what they want, not what they say they want, and certainly never myself. I hate it, but it's the only successful work social strategy I've found for stuck-up offices. At least until I locate the other easygoing people. "Tech" has become very tightly wound about acceptable personality types and professionalism. My roommate works a less-glamorous job in a industry that isn't full of itself. Unsurprisingly, they're much chiller people. We go to the bar with way more of his coworkers than mine.