Leaders come with every accent there is. Nobody follows someone because of how they pronounce “water.”

Accent carries class and country and almost nothing about capability, and it still gets used as a first filter constantly. The real reasons people follow somebody are mundane: they are clear, they are fair, they know what they are doing and they take the blame when it goes wrong. None of that lives in the vowels.

If your voice gets commented on, keep it and get good at the substance. And check your own reflex next time somebody’s accent is unfamiliar, because that reflex was probably borrowed rather than reasoned.