The Exhaustion of the Inner Circle

---

My NoSmalltalk session with Bithindra Biswas

by Albert Schiller

The Two Selves

Every leader maintains a professional persona, a curated version of the self designed for public consumption. For some, the distance between this public and private self is a vast, heavily guarded territory. Bithindra Biswas embodies this strategic separation. By his own admission, the direct, analytical, and task-oriented leader he projects in his professional life is a deliberate self. It is the guard for a "very emotional" private self. This duality raises the question about the nature of authenticity and its implications for leadership. What is the personal cost of maintaining a carefully designed fortress?

Hidden Softness

Biswas's emotional guardedness is not a personality quirk. It is a strategy born from harsh experience. His decision to maintain a small, heavily protected "inner circle" is based on two principles he has learned over his career: first, that most "people don't care" about another's internal struggles, and second, that many will "misuse" any vulnerability one reveals. His persona is a pragmatic defense mechanism. It is a fortress built to protect his emotional core from the indifference and potential opportunism of the professional world. This world, he concludes, is not a safe space for uncurated authenticity.

The Burden of Performance

Maintaining this fortress, however, requires a constant and significant expenditure of energy. Biswas uses a single word to describe the effort: "exhausting".

The continuous performance of being a "Jolly... happy, go, lucky kind of person" on the surface, while managing a complex internal world, is an intimate tax on his person. This is the final and most poignant manifestation of the "burden of intelligence." The wisdom to understand the risks of vulnerability, and the intelligence to construct a durable persona to protect oneself. It comes at the price of constant vigilance and the draining work of emotional curation.

The Price of Admission

The access to Biswas’s authentic, emotional self is rigorously protected. He is clear that only those "very close to me" are ever allowed to see his softer side, implying a monumental barrier to entry. This is a reflection of strategic discernment. The price of admission to his inner circle is a level of trust that has been earned over time. The value of this currency originates from past experiences where his vulnerability had shone. This careful selection process is a core part of his self-preservation strategy, ensuring that his private self is only revealed in the most trusted of environments.

Darwin’s Authenticity

This brings us to a final question. Is this constant curation of the self an act of inauthenticity, or is it a wise survival strategy in a high-stakes world? For Biswas, it appears to be the latter. His philosophy suggests that in a world where vulnerability can be weaponized, the most authentic act is not to be an open book but to use its cover to protect one's core fiercely. His fortress is not a betrayal of his identity. It is the very thing that allows his identity to survive intact. It is his pragmatic recognition that wholesome authenticity can be a luxury that a leader cannot always afford.

5 Lessons with practical values-

Open Questions

1. Biswas describes the constant management of his professional persona as "exhausting." In your own career, how do you manage the boundary between your public and private self, and what is the tangible cost of that performance?

2. His philosophy suggests that "wholesome authenticity" is a luxury. Do you agree? At what point does the strategic curation of your persona stop being a necessary defense mechanism and start becoming a barrier to genuine connection and effective leadership?