Different Like You Podcast

Transcript

Different Like You | Shantelle (00:01.922)
This podcast wasn't born in a studio. It was built in the wild in hospital scrubs amongst HR chaos, lots of coffee reports and leadership meetings that looked polished but felt like performance. I'm Shantelle, nurse, solo mum, chaos turn calm creator and this.

Different Like You | Shantelle (00:31.534)
I'm gonna start again, because the internet says it is having challenges. This podcast wasn't born in a studio. It was built in the wild in hospital scrubs, amongst HR chaos, lots of coffee, reports and leadership meetings that looked polished, but felt like performance. I'm Shantelle nurse, solo mom, chaos turn calm creator, and this is different like you. Today we're talking about masking in leadership, not in theory, in lived reality.

because I've been that leader who nailed the brief and still walked out of the room feeling hollow and like I did a terrible job. So what is masking? It's when we suppress or hide our neurodivergent traits to, in inverted commas, fit in.

Different Like You | Shantelle (01:36.416)
It's when we suppress or hide our neurodivergent traits to fit in, to look competent, to be taken seriously and to feel safe.

to always fit someone else's brief. And in leadership, that pressure triples because the systems weren't built with our neurodivergent selves in mind. And so we bend ourselves into versions that are palatable, professional, tick the box perfect. Honestly, I've ticked all of those boxes. I followed policy process, protocols to the T. I've run...

presentations and led meetings and been praised for being calm and clear. But the truth behind the mask, I was falling apart. Because just because something is lawful or follows procedure, it doesn't mean that it sits right in your gut. And just because it aligns with the job description, it doesn't mean that it aligns with your values. And that constant tension.

and performance for perfection of somebody else's version of perfection is exhausting and truly damaging.

There've been moments where I've delivered exactly what organizations wanted, but I knew it wasn't what the people needed. So it wasn't going to be successful and guess who was the for guy. And in other circumstances, even though I've been told I'm doing an excellent job, I'd leave feeling like it doesn't address the actual problem or it's not truly honest nor humane.

Different Like You | Shantelle (03:24.714)
And this isn't me.

the constant lack of sleep because you're running those scenarios in your mind of how can you make it more humane? How can you make it more honest to support both sides? And that's what masking your leadership can feel like. It's not always about stimming or not making eye contact. Sometimes it is horrendously about process and operation and values.

and it's about knowing that something's not right.

Not, you know, horrendously ethically or morally wrong or anything like that, but it's not right, but you're doing it anyway because that's your job. That's what's expected. That's what they want. That's what's documented. That's what's expected of you. That's what's been talked about. These are the project deliverables and you're dying on the inside. I can't pinpoint.

the exact moment when I realized that unmasking could actually make me a better leader, but I could feel the difference in my body, in myself, and more importantly, I could feel the difference in my home life. So I noticed it when I was working from home and I would stop pushing myself to...

Different Like You | Shantelle (04:56.236)
you know, maybe get dressed in the same outfit that if I was going into the office and I would maybe start writing reports while I was wearing my pajamas. Now I understand in this, in the whole effect of working from home in COVID that it was really important to still, you know, get up and get ready for the day because otherwise you can fall into this, you know, hole of what becomes normal for you.

that is not conducive nor healthy. But what I realized is I was so burnt out that if I started writing reports in my pajamas, I had time to have breakfast. I had removed a lot of pressures. I was still absolutely making the deadlines and nailing the content, but I was doing it in a way that worked for me and not in uncomfortable clothes and...

trying to figure out what fit to wear and not enforce professionalism. There was no cognitive overwhelming. Guess what? None of my work suffered. None of my work suffered. It got better. Because when I removed those seemingly small barriers, I actually made more room for the brilliance underneath.

Leadership doesn't mean you have to mask to be credible. Nobody's asking.

Different Like You | Shantelle (06:33.228)
Leadership doesn't mean you have to mask to be credible. Leadership is showing everybody in your team that they're valuable for exactly who they are. That nobody's asking for special treatment because everybody is different just like you and you're there to have considered conversations. You're asking for consideration. You're saying, we do this in writing instead of having a phone call?

I'm going to need about 10 minutes to prep downstairs on my own before this meeting or presentation or

Can we chunk this down and address each section differently? That's not weakness, that's leadership. That's changing the room so that others can bring their full selves too. It's okay that on Monday you needed things chunked down and on Wednesday maybe someone is asking you to slow down a little bit. Unmasking isn't selfish. It's necessary, it's contagious in the best possible way.

Imagine having a full, a team full of people who know that they are genuinely valued for who they are and what they're contributing as a team instead of performing like a circus animal or a circus performance. So here's your invitation this week. Where in your leadership

Are you performing competence instead of being real? And what might change if you let the mask down, even just a little bit?

Different Like You | Shantelle (08:26.998)
This could be in your home life. This could be in your work life. Because as parents we're leaders.

Different Like You | Shantelle (08:40.29)
This could be in your home life because as parents we are leaders. So are we actually performing confidence in

Different Like You | Shantelle (08:55.062)
Are we actually performing competence in front of our children instead of being genuine?

Mask On, Mask Off—Leading While Different