2 · Taking off the mask
Podcast show notes
In this episode, I delve into the concept of 'taking off the mask' in leadership.
I challenge the often-heard advice of 'fake it till you make it', advocating for authenticity in the workplace.
Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, I explore the impact of wearing masks – not physical ones, but the metaphorical masks we wear to fit into certain cultures or expectations.
This episode invites you to reflect on your own masks, understand their costs, and consider the power of being your true self. Join me as we uncover how shedding these masks can lead to more fulfilling leadership and personal growth.
Here are the highlights
(03:11) Embracing individuality in the workplace
(05:49) Workplace culture
(08:15) Psychological safety
Links
Get my quiz here: Unleash Your Leadership Potential!
Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organisation (2018)
Timothy Clarke, The Four Stages of Psychological Safety (2020)
Connect with Ruth
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Welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted, the podcast for women in leadership, where I help you fulfil your ambitions without sacrificing your sanity, or your resilience.
Hello, and welcome to episode two of Frustrated and Exhausted. Today I'm going to be talking about taking off the mask. First off, I want to know, how many times have you been told to fake it until you make it? I've been told this so many times I can't even count. And it's a phrase that just kind of trips off the tongue really, doesn't it? But it bugs the hell out of me. Why is that? Well, I get the idea that yes, okay, there are times when we don't really feel like doing something we're anxious or nervous about it, it stresses us out. Maybe it's something new. And it's that idea of kind of performance in the moment to get over a hurdle. I understand that. But the problem is that this concept in the world that we're operating in these days, and especially in the world of work, is that it gives licence to this idea of acting a part.
If there's one thing I want you to go away thinking about today, it's to really think about where you are faking it until you make it, where you're acting the part and what that is doing to your ability to lead from a place of authenticity, to really be you in the workplace. To me, faking it until you make it is something you do. Because you're expected to behave in a certain way. That some things are acceptable in particular cultures, and some things are unacceptable. And obviously, to a degree that is true, but I want you to be thinking about what potentially that's costing you, and what it's doing to the way that you're leading other people. To me, we need to be taking off our masks. Not always easy.
I spoke in the last episode about how challenging I can find it to be vulnerable. But we need to take off our masks, and we need to be who we are, to do anything else is exhausting.
So there's three things I'm going to talk about today. One, why we use masks and what that is doing to us, two, what the underpinning reasons for it are. And three, I'm going to give you a few prompts just to think about to consider where you're at with this, and where you may be wearing masks and where you're not.
So just to talk about why we use masks. Masks are a way of us trying to belong and fit in. And when we do that, it's kind of like joining, joining the family or joining the tribe or it gives us that sense of fitting into a particular culture. And it's what creates a particular environment and culture and if that's a culture that is positive for us, that allows us to drop the mask and allows us to thrive.
You know, if we feel we need the mask for that initial bit, just while we figure out the lay of the land. Fair enough. But very often I work with people who have spent decades, in some cases, trying to fit in, trying to fit into cultures that were not built with them in mind. And this often, well women, very often are in cultures where they don't necessarily fit. And they spend ages trying to learn the language, trying to behave in a particular way, conforming to what already exists in the environment in order to survive. It's a survival behaviour.
And you know, sometimes people call this code switching. So it's when people in an underrepresented group in an organisation, or a country or a culture of some description, they adjust their language. They adjust the way that they speak literally down to grammatical structures and idioms and all sorts of stuff. And they adjust both their behaviour and sometimes even appearance in order to fit into the dominant culture.
Now I remember oh my goodness, way back when when I joined the Foreign Office at that time, and I will say it has changed significantly. But at that time, there was a very specific culture and it wasn't what I belong to that is for sure. I had to dial down my Scottish accent because people would literally say I can’t understand you, and my accent has been broader than it is now but it's not that bad. I had to adjust the way that I spoke. I definitely adjusted the way that I dressed for many years. You know, kind of very much in the suited and booted way that it was back then. And I started to use words that I would never normally use in my language. Because I really wanted to belong, it took me a long, long time to realise that actually, the things that made me different, were actually kind of my superpower if you like. It was my differences that made me
able to do things in a way that other people couldn't do them.
It helped me to achieve results that other people potentially wouldn't have been able to. But for a long time, I just didn't see it at all. And it left me always feeling less than. It meant I didn't speak up in the way that I could have, or potentially should have, many times. It meant that my ideas weren't as openly shared by me. And sometimes we call this Impostor Syndrome.
Sometimes that feeling of not belonging and not fitting in, we feel like an imposter. But it's actually more than that. It's about being in an environment that doesn't reflect us. We don't see people like us, above us or around us. And therefore we feel that we need to adapt. And that plays over into how we then behave and show up. And we desperately try to overcome that using masks. Sometimes we pretend and that's tiring actually. And it also denies the people that we work with the chance to know who we really are. We use masks because fundamentally, we don't feel safe to be ourselves, it's quite a big thing.
When you think about it, we're spending the bulk of our time potentially in a place where we don't feel psychologically safe. You may well have come across this if you've been on a leadership development programme. Or if you follow people like Amy Edmondson, or Tim Clark. If you don't, I'd really suggest that you do, they’re great. And they talk a lot about what organisations need to have in place in order for people to feel psychologically safe to create that culture where we can challenge. It's okay to feel it's okay to do things differently.
The consequences for organisations of not having these things in placel, of having such a dominant culture that it feels that a lot of people don't belong, is that you can't challenge or you can't challenge as much as you might do. It's not okay to fail. And these things have a massive impact on innovation that keeps people quiet and pushed down in their boxes. And in the world that we live in now, we can't afford that. Organisations can't afford that. So there's a cost to the organisations that we work for of these cultures where we all feel like we have to behave in a particular way. And we have to have our masks on.
But there's also a cost for us as human beings, we don't get to be as creative as we could be. We don't get to fulfil our potential. We don't get to share everything, all those talents and quirks and great things that make us who we are. Other people don't get to see that. And the thing is, I bet you if you spoke to most people around the table, the majority would say that they feel like that. They feel that they're not really being themselves at work. What are we all doing? Why are we all hiding like this?
I've got a few prompts for you to think about. And the first one is just to think about how safe do you feel at work? How easy is it to speak up? To be heard? To say something that kinda goes against the majority in a meeting? How safe is it to, you know, on the harder end of things, to report aggression against you? How able are you to get the support that you need in order to do those things.
The next thing really is to think about what is the mask you're wearing? What part of yourself are you not prepared or not feeling safe enough to show? What are you protecting about yourself? Because we wear these masks for self preservation. And I want you to think about what you're gaining from that.
We don't live in a perfect world. And I completely understand you know, I've done it myself, that there are times where we have to wear those masks. It is not safe to take them off. So I want you to think about what you're getting from wearing it. I also want you to acknowledge what you're losing by wearing it. What are you losing? And what are the people that you work with losing because you're wearing one potentially more masks and if it's right for you. And again I acknowledge that there are some very toxic cultures out there. So it may might not be right for you. But if it does feel right for you, got your big pants on, and it feels like something that might be possible.
What’s one thing that you are currently protecting or hiding? Do you want to show a bit more off at work in order that people can really know who you are, and that they can really see how talented you are.
So far in this episode, I get that some of that might be quite challenging. You know, there's a lot of depth to the concepts around psychological safety. It's something that I use a lot in my work both with individuals and with teams, I would really recommend, I'll put the links in the show notes for Amy Edmondson and Tim Clark. There are others out there as well working on this, but there are two that I would really recommend having a look at if you want to kind of get under the skin of this a little bit more.
The other thing that you could do if you want to think a bit more about where you're at with your leadership, I've got a really fab quiz, doesn't take very long at all that you can do just to sort of see where you're at with things at the moment and your leadership. The links are in the show notes if you want to have a look at that.
Any comments or anything, I'm always happy to hear from people. So let me know how you get on both with thinking through your masks and what you want to wear and what you want to drop and with the quiz as well. Let me know how you get on.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Frustrated and Exhausted. Hit the follow button for future episodes. You can also follow me on Instagram @resonateleadership and LinkedIn at Ruth Alexandra Wood. I would absolutely love to hear from you.
Frustrated and Exhausted is brought to you by Resonate Leadership and the wonderful team at the Podcast Boutique. I'm your host Ruth Wood. Take care and speak to you soon.
