Young people working together at a table and smiling
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“Be you.”
Early-career advice for millennials and Gen Z is almost always a variation of this. Then you get promoted—and the problems reveal themselves.
Unbounded authenticity has consequences. It can quietly tank your credibility, exhaust your team or get weaponized against you. Amanda Litman's new book, When We're In Charge, is a leadership guide that takes this tension seriously, rather than papering over it.
Millennials and Gen Z—Litman calls them “next-gen”—have already reshaped the culture of work. Millennials redefined work-life balance. Gen Z, now entering the workforce in large numbers, is focused on the ethics of where they work and increasing diversity across the board.
Together, next-gen will soon make up the majority of the working world. Their leaders need a different road map. That’s what Litman delivers. It’s not a playbook of the past, but a practical guide to the specific challenges next-gen leaders face.
Litman isn’t a baby boomer CEO, dispensing out-of-date wisdom from a corner office or a business school professor, theorizing from a distance. She’s someone who built a business from the ground up.
After years of political campaign work, Litman co-founded Run for Something, an organization that recruits and supports young leaders running for state and local office, at 27 with no roadmap. She built a fully remote team and spent nearly a decade navigating leadership rules that were being rewritten in real time, often by her own generation.
Throughout this experience, Litman looked for guidance, but nothing fit. Existing playbooks were written for different kinds of leaders in a different era. So she wrote the book she needed herself. That origin story is what gives When We’re In Charge its authority.
But Litman didn’t write this book alone. She built it through interviews with a remarkable range of next-gen leaders.
For example, comedian, activist and producer Ilana Glazer lent Litman her advice on authenticity, an idea she calls “holding your shape.” This means knowing yourself well enough to understand what you should share and what you should keep to yourself—and keeping those boundaries firm.
Other leaders Litman spoke to bring in voices across industries, from Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Fla.) to Sarah Kunst, managing partner at venture capital firm Cleo Capital. The breadth of Litman’s interviews is part of what elevates the book into something more like a field guide for next-gen leaders.
Litman says your job as a leader isn’t to be your truest self—oversharing your weekend plans or every thought that crosses your mind. It’s to be your best working self in service of your team and its mission.
She calls this concept “responsible authenticity”—and it’s an important reframe. Being perpetually unfiltered doesn’t serve your goals or your people. Neither does being a robot. The answer lives in the deliberate overlap between who you really are and what your role requires.
Adam Grant said a decade ago: being yourself is terrible advice. He was right. Leaders who hide behind “being real” as a justification for missteps fail to realize that being their true selves isn’t a strategic step toward their larger goals.
Litman is the first to build an actionable framework around responsible authenticity for next-gen leaders.
Walking the line of authenticity is crucial. Here are a few ways next-gen leaders might get it wrong, according to Litman:
Litman also names a topic most boomer leadership books won’t touch: the double jeopardy faced by leaders of color and women, who are simultaneously encouraged to be themselves and penalized when they are, with no clear guidance on where the line actually is.
Her interviews surface this with specificity and honesty. Here is Litman’s 3-step framework for achieving responsible authenticity.
Who are you? How would a potential employer describe you? What about your best friend, your parents, your archnemesis, or a stranger? What stays consistent between these descriptions? That’s your core.
Here’s an example: My employer would describe me as a passionate worker who excels at problem-solving. My best friend would say I’m fun and supportive, while my parents would say I’m caring. My archnemesis would say that I overwork. My core, therefore, is a good team member who is willing to put the work in no matter what.
Or: My boss would describe me as a hard worker who thrives on working in a team towards a shared goal. My best friend would say I’m driven and supportive. A stranger would say I’m visibly kind to those around me. My core, therefore, is an ambitious but considerate professional who loves collaboration.
What are you trying to accomplish? Authenticity without a mission is just self-expression. Your persona in the workplace should serve something larger than you.
Here’s an example: I’m trying to support my organization’s nonprofit fundraising efforts by coordinating X earned media opportunities per month and growing our social media presence by Y%.
Or: I’m working to help my team fortify our company’s supply chain strategy by supporting sourcing efforts and long-term strategy.
What does the overlap look like? This is your leadership persona. It’s genuinely you, but a version of you truly in service of your team and its goals.
The overlap looks like: a motivated public relations and social media manager who collaborates cross-functionally to best position the nonprofit in the public eye and supports her team.
Or: This overlap looks like: a team player who is motivated to improve supply chain efficiency and cheer her team’s efforts on along the way.
Litman pairs this idea with an Ann Friedman metaphor: If you’re lost in the mall and run into every store looking for your mom, you’ll find no one. But if you stay in one place, she’ll find you.
What this means for next-gen leaders: Stake your ground. Be you, consistently and recognizably. Do this and the right people—and the right opportunities—will find you.
One more preview of Litman’s advice—and it’s one of the most counterintuitive but powerful ideas in the book. People don’t want you to be yourself. They want you to create the conditions for them to be themselves.
This requires two things from you as a next-gen leader:
Your persona, if built responsibly, is the vehicle for creating a culture of both trust and psychological safety. This isn’t a performance. It’s a consistent, reliable presence your team can orient around.
Unbounded authenticity has consequences. So does a lack of authenticity.
For the first time, there is a playbook—one written by someone who built her leadership in public, made mistakes in real time, and talked to dozens of next-gen leaders doing the same.
Litman emphasizes that the goal is never to be less yourself. It’s to be yourself strategically. When We’re In Charge is the first book to show exactly what this looks like.
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