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Few People functions get the conversation about authentic and vulnerable leadership right on the first try. In a recent episode of the Reimagining Company Culture podcast, Nicole Marra sat down to talk through how that work actually shows up day to day, where most teams stall, and what shifts when leaders take it seriously.
This piece pulls together the practical takeaways from that conversation alongside current research from primary HR sources. Treat it as a working reference for People leaders, Employee Relations specialists, and managers who want to move past slogans on authentic leadership.
Most blog posts on authentic leadership stop at definitions. The conversation with Nicole Marra did the opposite. They walked through the mistakes that look reasonable in a planning doc but fall apart in execution, and the small habits that quietly carry teams through the harder seasons.
Nicole Marra is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fixer Advisory Group, a consulting firm that provides strategic partnership to the world’s most dynamic brands, and serves as a trusted advisor to business executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Fixer specializes in operational support, legal services, real estate, DE&I, corporate culture, human resources, and storytelling. Fixer represents a varied client roster that includes Gucci, Veronica Beard, Tanger Outlets, Khaite, Jennifer Fisher, The Elder States
What Authentic Leadership Actually Sounds Like
This is where a focused company culture solution pays off, Strong programs start with the boring stuff: defining what good looks like, agreeing on a few shared signals, and building the muscle to act on them. In practice, that means moving past buzzwords on authentic leadership and putting structure behind the work.
That structure has to be built on real data, not vibes. According to McKinsey on the power of vulnerability in leadership, leader vulnerability builds psychological safety. The pattern is consistent across industries and team sizes.
It also helps to share a common vocabulary across People, managers, and executives. If your team is still aligning on basics like transformational leadership, that work belongs in front of the strategy conversation, not behind it.
Where Most People Teams Get Stuck on Authentic Leadership
Why do good intentions stall before action?
Most teams know what they want. The break point is usually in the operating model: who owns what, what the cadence is, and how decisions get made when something hard surfaces.
As Gallup research on workplace trust highlights, only 23% of US employees trust their organization's leaders. That tracks with what most People leaders see in their own data.
What separates one-off effort from durable practice?
Durable practice depends on systems that outlast a single champion. Tying the work to organizational culture and to specific manager behaviors is what carries it through reorgs and budget cycles.
The teams that get this right build a small set of shared rituals: a regular review of cases, a clear path for escalation, and an honest accounting of what changed because of the work.
What Actually Works
Principle 1: Make the work visible
Visibility is the cheapest intervention available to a People team. When the work is in front of managers, employees, and the executive team, behavior changes without a memo.
That can mean a monthly People dashboard, a quarterly trends review, or a simple summary of what got resolved and what stalled. The point is that it lives somewhere people see.
Principle 2: Build feedback loops that get used
Feedback is only useful if it produces a response. The teams that get the most from surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions are the ones that close the loop visibly and quickly.
Tying intake to emotional intelligence and to a clear case workflow means you can show employees what happened with their input, not just thank them for it.
Principle 3: Hold leaders accountable in public
Accountability is the part most cultures avoid. The People function that builds public review of leader behavior, not just employee behavior, gets a different result.
That looks like leadership scorecards, calibrated 360s, and direct conversation about what shifts when a specific leader is involved. None of it is comfortable. All of it works.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Most of these conversations live in the Employee Relations function, whether the team calls it that or not. The work shows up as concerns, escalations, investigations, and trend analysis that has to feed back into how the company actually runs.
A AllVoices employee survey platform gives ER a single place to track intake, document decisions, and surface patterns that would otherwise stay in spreadsheets. Pairing that with AllVoices workplace investigation tools keeps the work auditable when the volume picks up.
How does ER own this work without becoming the bottleneck?
The ER function does its best work when it is positioned as a partner to the business, not just a compliance backstop. That positioning is what turns a complaint queue into an early warning system.
Tools alone do not create the partnership. The structure around them, the cadence, the trust built with managers, the relationship with legal and Finance, is what makes ER a real strategic function.
Frequently Asked Questions About Authentic Leadership
What is authentic leadership, and why does it matter for HR?
At its most useful, authentic leadership is shorthand for a set of behaviors and structures that change how work feels day to day. People teams care because it shows up in retention, employee relations caseloads, and how quickly a new hire becomes productive.
How do People leaders measure progress on authentic leadership?
The most reliable measures are the ones that already live in your stack: ER case volume by category, manager effectiveness scores, retention by tenure, and engagement indices. Pair them with qualitative input from focus groups and skip-level conversations.
What's the biggest mistake teams make on authentic and vulnerable leadership?
They treat it as a campaign instead of a practice. A launch event without a quarterly cadence and a clear owner does not survive the first reorg. Operationalizing the work is what makes it stick.
How does this connect to Employee Relations work?
ER teams sit at the intersection of intake, investigation, and trend analysis. When the data from those workflows gets back to managers and leaders quickly, the rest of the People function can act earlier.
Where should a small People team start?
Start with one signal you can measure and one ritual you can keep. A monthly trends review or a quarterly leader scorecard beats an ambitious plan that never lands. Add scope only after the first ritual is sticking.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
The throughline in Nicole Marra's conversation is that practice beats theory. Every team has access to frameworks. The teams that move forward are the ones that translate the framework into a small number of standing rituals their managers can keep without a calendar reminder.
For People leaders watching budgets, the case is the same. For a deeper look at how Luxury Retailer approached this work, the pattern shows up clearly in how operating teams scale People practice. Cut the work that does not show up in manager behavior or in employee relations data. Double down on the work that does. The signal-to-noise ratio in the People function is what most teams underrate.
Practical next steps look modest from the outside. Pick one signal you already collect, like ER case volume by category or new-hire 90-day retention. Pick one ritual to act on it, like a monthly trends review with senior leaders. Stick with both for two quarters before adding anything new. The People teams that compound results year over year are the ones that keep their commitments small enough to actually keep.
See what changes when intake, investigations, and analytics live in one place.
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