🎧 Episode 19: Authentic Leadership   You've uncovered the shadows. Patched the leaks. Built the boundaries. Integrated your power. But here's the layer most high-achieving women still stumble on: They're still leading through masks.   Masks of professionalism that hide their real thoughts. Masks of perfection that disconnect them from their teams. Masks of being "easy to work with" that sacrifice their vision. Here's the truth: Masks don't protect you. They suffocate you.   For years in corporate, I wore the "perfect professional woman" mask so tightly I forgot what my own voice sounded like. The breaking point came in what I now call my "darkness season"—I literally stopped turning on overhead lights in my office. I worked in near darkness, as if dimming the room could make the mask easier to carry.   I wasn't leading. I was performing. And the cost was my authenticity, my energy, and my power. When I started my business, I thought I'd left the masks behind. But I'd just traded corporate masks for entrepreneurial ones: the "always available" mask, the "never too expensive" mask, the "easy to work with" mask, the "perfect expert" mask.   The shift came when I asked: What if my real thoughts, my real boundaries, my real leadership style were the very things my business needed most?   The research is powerful: • Harvard: Authentic leaders are 40% more effective, experience less decision fatigue • McKinsey: Women who shed masks are 2.5x more likely to report career satisfaction • Stanford: Leaders who suppress themselves lose 30% of cognitive energy to self-monitoring • Brené Brown: Authentic leaders increase trust by 64%, reduce conflict by nearly half   The 4 Most Common Masks: Perfect Expert (never admitting uncertainty)Always Agreeable (avoiding conflict, softening standards)Never Too Much (dimming personality, underpricing)Endlessly Available (immediate responses, weekends on call) When you lead with masks, you're performing. When you lead with authenticity, you're leading. Ready to lead without masks? Take the Identity Mask Quiz and discover where you're still performing instead of leading.

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