# Why Your Team Doesn’t See You as Authentic (And What to Do About It) with Maya Rupert Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260/why-your-team-doesn-t-see-you-as-authentic-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-maya-rupert Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260/why-your-team-doesn-t-see-you-as-authentic-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-maya-rupert.md Podcast: [Coachful Coaching Leadership Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260) Published: 2026-06-12T16:39:57+00:00 Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/david-fung7/episodes/Why-Your-Team-Doesnt-See-You-as-Authentic-And-What-to-Do-About-It-with-Maya-Rupert-e3kn5dq Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/dd8ca6e4/podcast/play/121394042/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-5-12%2F426027082-44100-2-09d8f474ad269.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260/episodes/why-your-team-doesn-t-see-you-as-authentic-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-maya-rupert Duration seconds: 2047 ## Resource What if the authenticity we keep demanding from leaders isn't actually a real, measurable thing? In this episode, I sit down with Maya Rupert , who managed Julián Castro's 2020 presidential campaign, becoming only the third Black woman in U.S. history to run a presidential campaign, and later served as a senior advisor to Elizabeth Warren. Today she's Executive Vice President at Blue State and the author of The Real Ones: How to Disrupt the Hidden Ways Racism Makes Us Less Authentic. Maya challenged something I hear constantly in the corporate world: that we can just "sense" when someone is or isn't authentic. She argues that judgment is mostly vibes, shaped by how many versions of "someone like them" we've seen before. Which means the narrower our reference points, the harder it is for women and people of color to ever be read as authentic, no matter how genuine they are. We get into how she defines real, self-reflective authenticity, what it was like running a campaign with no budget for message testing, why she asks every candidate to define winning beyond winning, and the one lesson from politics and movement work that business still hasn't learned about getting people to truly own their work. If you've ever been told to "just be yourself" and wondered whose self they meant, this one's for you. 🎧 Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Maya's introduction (plus a guest appearance from Crispin the cat) 01:45 Maya's path and why she wrote The Real Ones 04:01 How do you actually define authenticity? 05:54 The vibes-based test we use to judge leaders 09:49 What the 2020 campaign cycle revealed 11:48 Inside a presidential campaign: likability is "squishy" 14:46 The irony of measuring your own authenticity 18:21 When there's only one winner: re… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260/episodes/why-your-team-doesn-t-see-you-as-authentic-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-maya-rupert/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/coachful-coaching-leadership-podcast-6308260/why-your-team-doesn-t-see-you-as-authentic-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-maya-rupert.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.