What If Your LinkedIn Told the Truth?

by Corey New

“What If Your LinkedIn Told the Truth? Your public image is not your identity. Your truth lives beneath the performance.”

The Gap Between Image and Reality

I remember sitting in a coffee shop during my military transition, staring at my LinkedIn profile after a day of workshops on “personal branding.” Friends, mentors, and transition coaches had all weighed in on how to market myself to civilian employers.

Perfect headshot (not in uniform). Carefully sanitized bullet points (no military jargon). Strategic keywords (all the right buzzwords). Everything a career transition specialist would approve of.

And yet, looking at this digital version of myself, I felt like I was meeting a stranger.

Seven years have passed since then—seven years of building a post-military career, adapting and achieving by those corporate success metrics. And still, that feeling hasn’t left. If anything, it’s grown stronger, compelling me to finally close my laptop and confront the question that won’t leave me alone:

What if this profile told the truth?

When Leadership Was Real

In the military, I never thought about my “personal brand.” There was no time for that nonsense when decisions meant life or death.

Leadership wasn’t something you claimed in a bio—it was something you earned through action. It meant standing between your people and danger. It meant taking responsibility when things went sideways and giving credit when things went right.

I witnessed courage daily in combat zones—not the kind that makes headlines, but the quiet kind that shows up consistently. The medic who treated locals and enemies with the same care as our own. The team that functioned on four hours of sleep for weeks at a time.

None of it was photographed. None of it was announced on social media. There were no likes, no shares, no performance metrics. Just people doing what needed to be done, then waking up the next morning to do it all over again, day after brutal day. No one was tracking “engagement” except in the most human sense of the word.

That was leadership. Messy. Immediate. Real.

The Corporate Performance

Then I stepped into the corporate world, and everything felt theatrical.

I sat in meetings where people spoke in carefully sanitized language about “strategic alignment” and “value propositions” while avoiding the uncomfortable truths we all knew existed.

I watched executives preach about company values in town halls, then violate those values behind closed doors. I saw people promoted not because they led with integrity, but because they managed perception effectively.

And all the while, I was navigating a minefield of triggers that no corporate training prepared me for. Each day brought moments where my body remembered what my mind was still trying to process—where past experiences colored my perceptions, hijacked my emotions, and shaped my reactions in ways I couldn’t yet articulate, let alone explain to others who saw only the polished exterior I’d been told to maintain.

Still trying to figure out who I was supposed to be in this new world, where appearance seemed to matter more than substance.

The Exhaustion of Pretending

Maybe you know this feeling too.

The careful curation of your professional image. The strategic omission of struggles. The polishing of rough edges until you’re “appropriate” for consumption.

We get so good at it that sometimes we forget we’re performing.

Until we can’t anymore. Until the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be grows so wide that we feel we’re disappearing.

I remember the day I realized how tired I was. Not the kind of tired sleep fixes—the kind that comes from constantly managing how others see you. From fearing that if people knew the real you, with all your doubts, wounds, and imperfections, they’d find you unworthy.

What Real Connection Costs

Here’s what I’ve learned since then:

People don’t connect with perfection. They connect with humanity.

They don’t follow titles. They follow courage.

They don’t remember your achievements nearly as much as they remember how you made them feel seen, valued, and understood.

The leaders who have shaped me most weren’t the ones with flawless track records. They were the ones who had failed, struggled, and kept showing up anyway—the ones who shared not just their expertise, but their experience—including the messy parts.

The Question That Changes Everything

So I’ll ask you what I had to ask myself:

What would your LinkedIn profile look like if it told the truth?

Not just your wins, but your wounds. Not just your skills, but your struggles. Not just your successes, but your story—the real one.

What if, instead of saying, “Exceeded targets by 200%,” you said, “Learned resilience by failing repeatedly until something finally worked”?

What if, instead of “Expertise in strategic leadership,” you acknowledged, “Still figuring out how to lead myself on the hard days”?

What if we stopped performing long enough to be present?

Starting Small

I’m not suggesting you list your traumas as skills or air your deepest insecurities online. That’s not vulnerability—that’s just a different kind of performance.

But what if you took one small step toward authenticity today?

It could be admitting you don’t have all the answers. It could be sharing something you’re genuinely struggling with. Maybe it’s simply letting your authentic voice—not your “professional” voice—come through in your writing.

Why This Matters

The world doesn’t need more perfect-looking leaders. It requires more human ones.

People who lead not from a place of flawless authority, but from a place of authentic presence.

People who understand that their scars and struggles aren’t liabilities to hide—they’re the very experiences that allow them to connect, empathize, and truly serve others.

People who know integrity isn’t about appearing right—it’s about being real, even when uncomfortable.

Coming Home to Yourself

The strange paradox is this: The more I’ve allowed myself to be, the less alone I’ve felt. The more I’ve shared my genuine journey—not just my highlight reel—the deeper the connections I’ve made.

And the more I’ve stopped performing leadership and tried to serve with what I have, the more impact I’ve had.

That could be what coming home to yourself looks like. That could be what leadership is.

Not a performance at all, but a presence. Not perfection, but profound humanity.

What truth are you ready to tell?

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Corey New is a senior executive leader with over 30 years of military and corporate experience, including service as a U.S. Army Colonel and recent tenure as President and COO of ISI Professional Services. He specializes in strategic operations, logistics, and leadership development across government and private sectors. Corey also publishes a newsletter on Substack called The Unshaken Leader.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.