Bernadette BoasExecutive Leadership Coach, Trainer and Speaker, Ball of Fire Coaching · Become the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow and No One Can Overlook.

Unlocking Leadership The Power of Your Voice

14 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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1:03

In this personal narrative, the speaker recounts a pivotal moment while seated at a male‑dominated meeting where the conversation centered on topics she found irrelevant, such as sports and Formula 1. Although she has historically relied on a chameleon‑like sales persona to blend in, she reached a breaking point where her body refused to continue masking her disinterest. The incident prompted her manager to check in, and it sparked a months‑long internal process to stop pretending and move toward authentic leadership. Over six to eight months she devised and began implementing a plan to align her professional voice with her true self, highlighting the emotional toll of constant masking and the importance of genuine self‑expression in leadership.

Chapters

And I've had amazing male role models and mentors and, and managers my whole career. But I was sitting in a pretty male-dominated table and they were talking about things I had no interest, like sports and Formula 1 racing and all of these things. And I was a trained chameleon in sales and I just sat there so silent because it was this moment where I, my, it was like my body had decided I cannot pretend any longer. That I care about this. Can I cuss on this show? It's sure that I care about this shit. Like, I was like, I don't care about this shit. And I'm normally very chatty and I can show up in any room, and I just sat there and I was like, no, nope, I can't do this anymore. And I remember my manager coming to me and asking me if everything was okay. And, and it was kind of that moment that I decided that I needed to make a change. And it wasn't— I didn't change overnight. It took me about 6 8 months to really put my plan in motion, but it was, it was, my body was like stopping me from speaking because I just stopped wanting to mask.