How Leaders’ Experienced Authenticity Influences Team Performance: A Behavioral Integrity Lens

Abstract

While past work has demonstrated that experienced authenticity is important for well-being, the interpersonal consequences of perceiving oneself as authentic are less well-understood. This paper fills this gap in the literature using theory and research on behavioral integrity, highlighting the perceptual filters that exist when conveying one's authenticity to others and thus the importance of political skill to help counter misinterpretations of one's authenticity. We tested our hypothesized model in a time-lagged, multi-source survey study of 78 teams. Our results demonstrated that leaders’ experienced authenticity was negatively related to followers’ perception of leader behavioral integrity unless the leader was politically skilled. Additionally, behavioral integrity was a key mechanism in our moderated-mediation model explaining why leader authenticity and political skill combine to predict team performance.