Many employees are encouraged to “just be yourself,” only to find their authenticity — and their career ambitions — constrained by unwritten office rules about appearance, speech, and behavior. Professionals of color, women, and LGBTs find there is a much narrower band of acceptance, and the constraints bite harder than wearing more polished outfits, getting a decent haircut, or even de-emphasizing an accent. Because senior leaders are overwhelmingly “pale and male” — professionals of color hold only 11% of executive positions in corporate America, women currently make up just 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, and there are even fewer openly gay chief executives — they often feel they have to scrub themselves of the ethnic, religious, racial, socioeconomic, and educational identifiers that make them who they really are.