When you are a chameleon who actually does the work, you're a charismatic and effective employee/leader. When you're a chameleon who doesn't do the work, you're a bullshitter.
If you look at manuals on effective leadership, one of the first pieces of advice is to figure out each person's social style and engage them the way they prefer to interact. Being a chameleon of sorts is part of the skillset of an effective leader. (Specifically, referring to this: https://hbr.org/2000/03/leadership-that-gets-results)
In your classic case of a guy who tells one person one story and another person a different story, yeah, that's pretty disingenuous and makes that person untrustworthy.
However, for example, if you are a gay man in a community that isn't lgbt friendly, then misrepresenting your actual opinion on homosexuality becomes a matter of self preservation. As a minority, it's a pretty common experience to need to control your image carefully in small ways.
The article, however, suggests changing your deeds based on who you are interacting with. I see such behavior in management in my company here and there. I can't stand it. In my opinion, people who engage in such interaction are liars and impediments to success. I see them as a sort of optimized apathy. They say what everyone wants to hear and then they find a way to do almost no work. Or they promise things they never deliver. It creates bad culture because the people who actually do work watch and learn, then apply the same technique.
It sounds like you're describing someone who over-promises and under-delivers. Or manipulates.
The article is talking about someone who shifts social interaction styles depending on who they're talking to.
There might be some reason to bucket those things together because they both fall under the umbrella of being a people pleaser. But they're separable aspects of interaction.
In my own experience, people don't actually want other people to be authentic. They want people to simultaneously be a personality type they already like (or, in work environments, expect), and exude an aura of authenticity. I've acted exactly what comes naturally to me in the past, and after hearing through the grapevine what people thought of me realized I can never be myself at work.
Over the course of one meeting, I came across as a "turbo-autist" to one person, and a "brogrammer douche" to someone from a different team. Now I give people what they want, not what they say they want, and certainly never myself. I hate it, but it's the only successful work social strategy I've found for stuck-up offices. At least until I locate the other easygoing people.
"Tech" has become very tightly wound about acceptable personality types and professionalism. My roommate works a less-glamorous job in a industry that isn't full of itself. Unsurprisingly, they're much chiller people. We go to the bar with way more of his coworkers than mine.
And yet, I've seen many manipulators/jerks in high/very high positions in places I've worked (and nice people too). I've also seen people who've hit the wall simply move to other companies and rinse/repeat until they hit the wall in the new place.
Everyone knows manipulating is wrong, but some embrace it and make it work for them. It sucks, but it also works, otherwise so many people wouldn't doing it.
> Actually, every person on my team rolls their eyes [...]
Are you sure they're not just mimicking you?
Now that I'm in a higher roll, I notice a lot of people who chameleon their ways right up the chain. They eventually hit the wall and it eventually becomes clear that they cannot perform. I usually tell them directly, which may make me a bit of a jerk, but I prefer to receive direct criticism so I can respond by working on my skill sets. The article is telling its readers to play the game, but putting effort into being a manipulator is bad advice.