Business

Former U.S. Secret Service agent says bringing your authentic self to work stifles teamwork: ‘You don’t get high performers, you get sloppiness’

Published

4 months ago

September 26, 2025

Especially as you grow tenure at an organization, it feels much easier and comfortable to bring your authentic self to work. But former Secret Agent Evy Poumpouras says that’s bad for business.

“Don’t bring your authentic self to work. I don’t want your authentic self to work. I want your professional self. I want your respectful self,” she recently told The Diary of a CEO podcast. “I want your empathetic self. I want your competent self. You can bring your authentic self to a Thanksgiving meal with your family if you’d like to.”

Poumpouras, a Queens, New York native, was a U.S. Secret Service special agent, polygraph examiner, and interrogator who served from 2000 to 2012, protecting U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and George H.W. Bush. She’s now a law enforcement and national security analyst, best-selling author of Becoming Bulletproof, and adjunct professor at the City University of New York.

“Could you imagine if I brought my authentic New York self to every interrogation I did?” she asked, recounting an interrogation from years ago in which she had to interview a 16-year-old boy who had allegedly assaulted a three-year-old little girl.

“What would my authentic self say? ‘What are you thinking? How could you? It’s a three-year old.’ No, I brought my professional self,” she said.

What mattered more in that moment was getting a confession, she said, so she could find out what happened so the little girl wouldn’t be victimized again. “‘Okay, tell me what happened. Tell me more,’” she recalled saying. “Non judgment. Poker face. You know why? Because what I think my authentic self is irrelevant.”

Poumpouras also argues bringing your authentic self to work puts the spotlight on one individual instead of prioritizing teamwork.

“Don’t come in and be phony. Nobody wants a phony. But [the] authentic self has become me, me, me, me, me. Everybody, check me out,” she said. “I was irrelevant. When you show up to work, wherever you work, [ask] what are you bringing to bring value to the whole team, because your authentic self could be ‘I’m bringing my problems, I’m bringing my opinions. I’m bringing my judgments.’”

“Honestly, nobody cares,” she added.

What other experts say about authenticity at work

In a Science of Personality podcast episode published this week, Ryne Sherman, chief science officer at Hogan Assessment Systems, also said authenticity at the workplace has its drawbacks.

“Bringing your authentic self to work could get you into trouble,” he said. It can cause professionalism problems, interpersonal conflict, and hinder career development, he added, giving the example of responding angrily by screaming, stomping, or sending a harshly worded email. While that behavior might feel authentic at the moment, it’s clearly unprofessional.

“When we resist doing those things, we are being inauthentic,” Sherman said. “We’re not responding in a way that is consistent with our true feelings.” But that’s a good thing, he added.

Other studies, however, show authenticity in the workplace can have its merits. Research by Cynthia S. Wang and other co-researchers at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, published in March, said authenticity at work can improve well-being, colleague relationships, and organizational commitment.

Wang found, though, this can be particularly difficult for marginalized and minority groups at work.

“What we’re talking about is actual authenticity—the ability to express yourself—which is slightly different from the idea of inclusion,” Wang said. “You can include somebody in a meeting, for example, but they still may not feel comfortable with being authentic and speaking up.”

Still, Poumpouras argues authenticity in the workplace inhibits high performance.

“You get sloppiness. Everybody’s doing their own thing,” she said. “That’s not a team.”

“If you’re team-oriented, you leave your authentic self here, and you bring your genuine self who genuinely cares about the mission, who genuinely cares to do a good job, who genuinely knows that it’s not about you, it’s about the collective team,” she added.

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Business

Davos 2026: reading the signals, not the headlines

Published

23 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Davos 2026: reading the signals, not the headlines | Fortune

Louisa Loran advises boards and leadership teams on transformation and long-term value creation and currently serves on the boards of Copenhagen Business School and CataCap Private Equity. At Google, Louisa launched a billion-dollar supply chain solutions business, doubled growth in a global industry vertical, and led strategic business transformation for the company’s largest customers in EMEA—working at the forefront of AI, data, and platform innovation. At Maersk, she co-authored the strategy that redefined the brand globally and doubled its share price, helping pivot the company from traditional shipping to integrated logistics. Her career began in the luxury and FMCG space with Moët Hennessy and Diageo, where she built iconic brands and led innovation at the intersection of heritage and digital transformation.

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Business

Hotels allege predatory pricing, forced exclusivity in Trip.com antitrust probe

Published

54 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

China’s hotels are welcoming record numbers of travelers, yet room rates are sinking—a paradox many operators blame on Trip.com Group Ltd.

For Gary Huang, running a five-room homestay in the scenic Huzhou hills near Shanghai was supposed to secure his family’s financial future. Instead, he and other hoteliers in China’s southeastern Zhejiang province say nightly rates have fallen to levels last seen more than a decade ago, as Trip.com’s frequent discount campaigns force them to cut prices simply to remain visible on China’s dominant booking platform.

“The promotion campaigns now are almost a daily routine,” said Huang, who asked to use his self-given English name out of concern of speaking out against Trip.com. “We have to constantly cut prices at least 15% to attract travelers. We have no choice but to go along with the price cuts.”

Trip.com has been central to China’s post-pandemic travel rebound, connecting millions of travelers with small operators like Huang. But for many hotels, visibility—and sometimes survival—comes at the expense of profits.

That dynamic is now at the heart of Beijing’s antitrust probe. Regulators allege Trip.com is abusing its market position, with analysts citing deflation across the sector as the government’s main concern. Interviews with lodging operators, industry groups and travel consultants describe a system where constant price-cutting and opaque policies are eroding profitability, even as demand rebounds.

Trip.com has said it’s cooperating with the government’s investigation. The company’s stock dove more 16% since the probe was announced a week ago.

Revenue per room—a key hotel metric—was flat across China in 2025, even as other Asian markets saw gains, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Marriott International Inc.’s revenue per room in China fell 1% most of last year, while Hilton’s China room revenue trailed its regional peers.

The company controls about 56% of China’s online travel market, according to China Trading Desk, and has grown into the world’s largest booking site. Its dominance has helped fuel domestic tourism’s recovery—nearly 5 billion trips were logged in the first three quarters of 2025—but operators say the benefits are being offset by falling room yields.

“The market has developed unevenly and innovation is lacking due to monopolistic practices,” said He Shuangquan, head of the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Homestay Industry Association that represents some 7,000 operators. “The entire online travel agency sector is stagnating in a pool of dead water.”

‘Pick-one-of-two’

The broader challenge is oversupply and cautious consumer spending. In regions like Yunnan, hotel capacity has tripled since the pandemic, just as travelers tightened budgets. Consultants note that while people are traveling more, they’re spending less—leaving hotels slashing rates to fill empty beds and posting billions in losses.

For operators like Huang, the paradox is stark: the platform that delivers customers is also accelerating the race to the bottom. The complaints center around Trip.com’s “er xuan yi,” Mandarin for pick-one-of-two exclusivity arrangements—a practice that Chinese regulators have repeatedly vowed to stamp out.

Trip.com categorizes merchants into tiers with “Special Merchants” enjoying the most visibility and traffic, Yunnan Provincial Tourism’s He said. However, these top-tier merchants are typically prohibited from listing on rival platforms like Alibaba’s Fliggy, ByteDance’s Douyin or Meituan. Merchants who aren’t bound by these exclusive arrangements report being effectively compelled to offer the lowest prices on Trip.com’s online booking platform Ctrip, or risk facing a raft of measures like lowered search rankings.

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Business

CEOs at Davos are buying into the agentic AI hype

Published

1 hour ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Good morning. The atmosphere here at the World Economic Forum in Davos is all about nervous excitement as the Trump administration descends on the normally quaint but currently chaotic ski town in the Alps.

President Donald Trump will be making remarks just a couple hours from now, and Fortune will be reporting live from USA House on the main promenade, with insights from government officials and chief executives during and immediately following the president’s conversation. Keep an eye on our livestream, here https://fortune.com/2026/01/21/ceos-davos-buy-into-the-agentic-ai-hype/.

Elsewhere around town, CEOs are setting their agendas for the year. Here’s what’s top of mind for a few of them:

This will actually be the year of agentic AI. The first time I heard the term “agentic AI” was at Davos last year. For all the hype around it, does the average CEO really know what it is or how to deploy it? And is AI good enough yet for agents to replace or even significantly assist human employees? The answer appears to be yes. Google Gemini head Demis Hassabis told me that Gemini 3 achieved some milestones that allow agentic AI to truly proliferate in terms of its capabilities. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott is also an emphatic “yes,” and says he is already using it to do things like automate his IT department (without doing layoffs, he stresses; he says he has repurposed employees instead). He thinks other CEOs are ready to do the same.

Get ready for Google glasses—for real, this time. A decade ago, Google launched its Google Glass eyewear to widespread mockery. Hassabis thinks the timing was just off; at the time there was no super app to go on the platform. AI has changed that, and Hassabis is bullish on Gemini glasses being the future form for consumer AI. Meta is betting the same thing, and OpenAI is also reportedly considering a super-device, but it doesn’t seem like either can match Gemini’s capabilities any time soon.

There’s artificial intelligence, and now there’s also “energy intelligence.” Schneider Electric CEO Olivier Blum says that nailing energy intelligence is his mission this year. By that he means he wants to capture data from various energy sources into a single “data cube,” filter it, and use agentic AI so customers can manage it all in one place to find opportunities to save power and money. “Our job is to make sure we go to the next level of energy technology to make energy more intelligent,” he told me yesterday. If he can achieve it, he sees a 7%-10% annual growth opportunity ahead.

Greenland: national panic or national security risk? I’ve heard various reactions to President Trump’s desire for a full U.S. takeover of the huge island—from outrage to vigorous support. If he does get his wish (which some here think is likely), could Europe retaliate by making life harder and more restrictive for big U.S. tech companies? That was one CEO’s consideration. Said another: “Clear-eyed people can agree that that is a national security concern. And having a national security concern is not just a U.S. concern, it’s also a NATO concern.” They were optimistic that the in-person meetings this week would help move the matter in a positive direction. You can follow all our Davos coverage—including Fortune live interviews today with Ray Dalio, Dara Khosrowshahi and more—right here.—Alyson Shontell

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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