For individuals 1 of 3
- The mask
- Lessons learned
- So what next?
The mask
The mask gets you so far
Everyone wears a mask. It is the version of yourself you present so that people will accept you, and everyone pretends they are not wearing one.
For many leaders the mask has worked. It has carried them through promotions, difficult rooms and years of pressure.
I work one-to-one with leaders who want to change how they actually operate, not just how they come across. I start by reading what sits underneath: your confidence, your reactions, the way you handle pressure. It is for the person asking the real question: why do I feel this way?
What is the mask?
How are you measured at work? Not how your company says you are measured. How you believe you are measured. That is what drives your behaviour, and more often than not it has little to do with how your team actually evaluates you as a leader. Does it feel exhausting? Do you feel like an impostor?
The mask is a curated image, built to protect you from judgement. It covers the parts of you that you believe other people will not accept.
It hides four things: fear, insecurity, shame and hurt.
How the mask shows up at work
A mask is usually the opposite of what it hides. Here are five common ones, with how the wearer describes it:
Overconfidence
I’m very confident in my abilities.
It usually hides self-doubt.
Perfectionism
I have high standards.
It usually hides a fear of making mistakes.
Control
I like to keep things organised.
It usually hides a fear of things becoming unpredictable.
Overworking
I’m dedicated and driven.
It usually avoids personal or emotional issues.
Over-helpfulness
I enjoy helping others.
It usually hides a need for approval, or a fear of being seen as useless.
Why we wear the mask
The need to be accepted is old. For our ancestors, being cast out of the group was a threat to survival, and the brain still runs that program.
Masks form in childhood. Children learn quickly which behaviours earn approval and which earn punishment. They show more of the first and hide the second, until the habit runs without them noticing.
The impact of the mask
Exhaustion
Thirty years of research shows that displaying an emotion you do not feel predicts emotional exhaustion. Genuinely changing how you feel does not.
Lower satisfaction
The same research links the performance to lower job satisfaction. Genuine change does not carry that link.
People feel it
When someone hides what they feel, the person they are talking to finds them less warm and harder to talk to, and that person’s blood pressure rises.
It breaks under pressure
A performed calm swings to the other extreme when it fails. This is why people snap.
Beyond the mask
Before anyone can stop, they first have to see the mask. People who try to fix a mask usually swing to its opposite. The answer is the middle, which is real composure.
Real composure is not a better performance. It is the absence of one. You are not spending energy trying to appear in control. You are in control, because you have done the work underneath it. The authority does not come from the title, and it does not come from the act. It comes from self-mastery.
One of them drains you. The other gives energy back.
When I left the corporate world, I believed there had only ever been two choices: comply and lose yourself, or resist and be shown the door. There is a third way. Real composure, built rather than performed, works without asking you to surrender a single thing you believe. It can be taught, and it puts you ahead of the peers who are burning themselves out on compliance at one end and resistance at the other.
If any of that sounded familiar
Write to me. I take a small number of clients, and the first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. I will tell you honestly whether I can help you.
Or write to me at richard@gain-intelligence.com