The Maat Matter
When promotion tests identity, not competence
First posted on LinkedIn Jan 2026
Moving into senior leadership demands new skills and new mindsets. As The Leadership Pipeline (Charan, Drotter and Noel) illustrates, horizons widen, stakeholders multiply, and the questions become more complex. Stepping up from a functional lead is especially significant: it often brings you into the orbit of the C-Suite (management team) or directly onto it. At this point, you’re no longer a representative of your function, you become jointly responsible for the fortunes of the whole organisation. You are seen as an ambassador, a figurehead, and aligned to the top team.
Authenticity challenge vs Competence
We all know the Peter Principle, the idea that people get promoted to their level of incompetence. It’s usually invoked when someone appears to flounder in a senior role. Yet, performance issues at this level are often less about competence and more about insufficient support, unclear expectations, or the steepness of the learning curve. With those addressed, many leaders adapt and thrive.
There can, however, be another dynamic at play, and this is dealt with through more private, inner work. If the Peter Principle is about not being able to do the job, the Maat Matter speaks to promoted leaders who struggle to be as the role requires. Maat was the Egyptian Goddess of truth, order and justice.
Some leaders perceive that stepping into senior leadership may demand a kind of disloyalty to previous colleagues and require them to betray their authenticity. If they recognise this early, they may avoid or decline promotion altogether. As one leader once put it, “I don’t want to have to swallow the pill.”
Emotional Labour in Senior Leadership
Others only discover the difficulty once they are in post. They experience emotional labour (the work required to portray an outer demeanour that differs from their inner emotional state) far greater than they expected. Over time, that strain can bring out the worst in them. They can go from being in their element to being unable to consistently access their higher-level thinking, crucial for strategic decision-making and dealing with complexity. Not because they can’t do the work, but because they feel drained by violating their sense of who they are.
Authenticity in leadership is often defined as the alignment between inner values and outward behaviour. It’s believed to be about honest and transparent expression, not performing a persona simply to meet expectations.
However, bridging the gap and is unavoidable if not essential in many roles. Call-centre staff must respond kindly to aggression even if they feel affronted. Paramedics must project calm with distraught relatives even though it may affect them. For senior leaders, they navigate dilemmas where they must carry knowledge they cannot share, make decisions others won’t like, and maintain confidence when certainty is impossible.
This does not mean that authentic people should shun senior roles. It is about discerning how much of you authenticity to reveal and to whom. There is a growing backlash to the “authenticity” fad, with the pushback that employers don’t need your authentic self, they need your professional self at work.
So perhaps the real question is whether you can imagine yourself embodying the role without feeling disingenuous and without it taking too much of a toll. It’s a much messier world the higher you get in senior leadership. Truth, order and justice are harder to discern and navigate in the context of multiple, shifting stakeholder agendas in a volatile wider context. Much will rest on your confidence in managing the emotional labour involved and reframing what authenticity means to you.
What to ask yourself
Can you hold paradoxes without judgment? Regulate your emotional state amid high-stakes decisions so that those below you feel held rather than rattled? Withstand criticism from those who don’t have access to the full picture and not take it personally? Convey steadiness during organisational turbulence, even when you don’t yet have answers? Offer psychological safety without pretending you are infallible?
These are substantial demands. They call for maturity, resilience, self-awareness, and a healthy relationship with your own limitations. Underlying them are two deeper questions:
- Do you care enough about the organisation’s purpose and goals to take on what senior leadership requires? (A strong enough “Why”)
- Do you believe in your capacity to grow and to evolve your understanding of authenticity as your perspective on complex systems broadens?
These intangibles are rarely discussed at work, never mind addressed in leadership programmes, yet they determine whether a senior leadership role might strengthen or diminishes you. Senior leadership isn’t easy. It challenges both head and heart, and it asks you to tolerate ambiguity, bear responsibility, often to stand alone, and to learn to conduct critical dialogue with dignity, even when all disagree. Without compelling personal reasons, the price can be high, and I’ve seen some leaders pay it when they don’t do the inner work.
So, deal with the Maat Matter
Know what you are signing up for and be truthful about whether the role is right for you. Declining a promotion can be an act of profound self-care and integrity. On the other hand, accepting can be an act of great courage and faith in yourself when you know what it will ask of you, and when you choose to invest in your growth.
Be honest with yourself, honour your own needs. And have respect for those who make different choices, senior leadership is not for everyone – and that is as it should be.
© Siobhan Soraghan 2026
