3 Essential Practices of an Authentic Leader

Foreign Hi, I'm Susan Jerome and welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on authentic leadership and I'm excited to introduce Melissa Bernstein. Melissa is an entrepreneur and working mother of six children. And as co founder of the wildly successful toy company called Melissa and Doug, Melissa has spent the last 30 years creating products to help children discover themselves, their passion and their purpose through open ended play. In 2022, Melissa founded Lifelines. And through Lifelines, she uses her creativity and imagination to reinvent well being products and experiences that help adults strengthen their resilience and unlock their full potential. And in her book, also called Lifelines, Melissa shares her inspirational journey and the lifelines that enabled her to triumph over anxiety, depression and despair. So welcome Melissa. I can't wait to dive in and talk about this amazing journey of self discovery.

Susan, I'm so honored to be here.

Okay, so let's talk about what this journey was like for you. I love to bring on successful entrepreneurs who maybe in the past led in a certain way and went through their own personal journey to now lead in a far more enlightened or conscious way. And you have that story. So at love to hear a little bit more about that journey and what it was like before and what it's like now.

Absolutely. It has been a true, I'd say an amazing journey because, you know, the way I led really mirrored the way I dealt with myself, which was I didn't accept myself. I didn't accept that I was like a full spectrum of emotions, sort of from the highest of high to the lowest of lows. And I repressed pretty much everything I felt other than this shiny side. Right. And so many women I think, sort of resort to that when they feel that the emotions, the dark emotions might overtake them. They end up repressing all those emotions and sort of clinging to this image of perfection. And that's really what I did for most of my life. I put on this face that like, everything's great. I only had one emotion which was I'm great, I'm fine, everything's perfect. And I really tried to be this robotic person who you could put anything on you wanted, like pile it on. I'm a camel, I can take everything And I will never buckle. I will never show any sign of fatigue, and I will get it all done, sort of with a smile.

And that's what we used to believe that leadership was. Right? You need to be strong and not show weakness and be this person that, you know, can handle it all. How did you then show up as a leader or how did that impact your results as a leader coming from that side?

I mean, as far as results go, it was probably the best thing ever. Right. Because I worked 24, 7. I led as an example, I would say, in terms of, you know, never stopping working through anything. I mean, I had six children, and I was working like, the day after I had them. I left, like, hours before I went into labor. And it was like one of those that I wanted to kind of prove that I was a superwoman, to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't have any human fallibility, and that's the way I led. And, you know, it was. It was a stoic way of leading. It was showing nothing that was really authentic and true.

Yes. And so how did you make that transition?

Yeah, I mean, the. I guess the good news was it began very organically as this drumbeat sort of in my soul, because I had always denied the truth of who I was, which is a very deep, introverted, soulful, creative that has a lot of emotions. And I always used to say, sort of both the beauty and the pain of the world are unbearable for me because I think I feel incredibly deeply. And I always believed that feeling deeply was a stigma. And when, if I showed any of that to the world, you know, I would be. I would be shunned. And I didn't want to be shunned. I was one of those people that wanted to be popular and wanted to fit in. And I think I really denied my truth. I think we can effectively deny the truth of who we are sort of in our teens and in our twenties. We can repress it and we can try to be that. That shiny societal image of who we want to be. But for me, as I got into my early 40s, I started to hear something that I can only call the drumbeat of my soul. And it was basically a voice that was saying, like, you aren't being truthful to yourself, like you are being inauthentic. And I began to feel like I was one of the toys I created, that I created this light bright toy in a shiny package that sat on a shelf and glistened under the lights. And the truth was that those toys and me, we were not just shiny bright, you know, shiny bright feelings. We were a full spectrum. So I think it was an evolution where I finally felt compelled through a whole bunch of dots connecting, to come out and really show that I actually am much more than just that facade, that shiny exterior.

Yes. And where there are certain things that were particularly helpful along that journey for you to recognize and embrace who you really are and be authentic with yourself.

I mean, I had to use the examples of others. And my journey has been very much philosophical and spiritual. And it came through beginning to listen to a lot of other people coming out and sharing their truth. And there were a couple podcasts in particular that I listened to at the time that really gave me the courage that I could come out and share my truth. And also I used a lot of reading. I'm a voracious reader. I'm always reading three books simultaneously, spontaneously. And I started to read a lot about my particular condition, which it's called existential angst. It's a meaning crisis and sort of the philosophical path. I began to see that I actually wasn't alone in the way I had believed that my mind had told me that there had been many other people before me who had also grappled with these deep questions of existence and had found a pathway out. And I think knowing that I wasn't alone in that and knowing that so many others, and it turned out many of them were really creative, had followed that same path. And maybe those qualities that enabled us to create were the same qualities that also gave us a lot of that darkness. And a lot of those realizations that came through studying philosophy and spirituality gave me the courage to come out. Because then I started to say, wow, if I've waited until my mid age to understand these obvious realizations about myself, there have to be so many others that are stuck in the darkness and can't get out. And that really my desire to share these incredible revelations with others really powered me to come out.

So tell me, what books were they that, do you recall, that were most impactful for you? I think it would be helpful to hear.

I mean, the number one that really changed my life was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Yeah, and I think Frankl, he's written, by the way, 20 books, I've read all of them. Is he really?

I didn't realize that.

Yeah, that was him for that one book. And that's not his best book in my opinion, but. But he really changed my life because I think he proved that people can undergo the Most horrific of circumstances that are out of their control, but they can still choose how to make meaning out of it. And I ended up, even today, sort of coining a term which is trauma, which is, can we use all the suffering that is implicit in being human? And we have to realize that all of us will have traumas in our lives, but if we can somehow gain enough distance from that trauma so we can find the meaning in it. So trauma meaning, we can then use it as fodder for tremendous growth. And that's really what studying Viktor Frankl and his whole philosophy, which is called Logotherapy, that really propelled me on this beautiful journey.

It's such an inspirational book. His story for people who don't know is he was a concentration camp victim, and he talks about his ability to survive was really based on his mindset and the meaning that he gave his experience. And so his quote is, all else can be taken from a man but that which allows him to make meaning of his current circumstances. And I use that quote when we talk about being in a victim versus a responsible mindset. And that going to a responsible mindset says, you know, there's something here for me to learn, and I'm contributing to this circumstance by the story I'm telling myself about it. So looking deeper into the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences, I think is a huge opportunity for growth in any part where you felt deep trauma. What is both a way to own the trauma. So we're not denying that. And also say, who does that make you now?

Yeah.

And what is a way to embrace that aspect of you?

Exactly. And the reason so many find Victor Frankl's story life changing is because, you know, he suffered the most, the most acute indignities anybody can suffer. And truly, everything was stripped from him. And we all, all of us who are real, like Viktor Frankl fans, we all say the following. We say, if he, in the face of that sort of an undeniable fate, out of his control, could find a reason to live and make meaning, then surely I can. Yes.

Sometimes you have to see it. Like, if he can do it at that level, I can do it, no matter what I'm dealing with.

That's true. What it was. Yeah. My favorite book of his is called yes to Life In Spite of Everything. It's a beautiful book.

I have not read that. Okay.

So thank you.

That's good. And now, having walked this path, how do you show up in your leadership and what's that given you in terms of your success or how you lead And I mean, I deem success internally as well as alternate external.

It changed me like 180 degrees because I was completely inauthentic, not only to myself, but to the world, because it starts internally before we can bring it externally. And then once I went through. Ultimately, I went through five years of intense therapy, and most of it was cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy to really take all those mind stories I told myself, which were, no one will ever accept me, right, as this deep, introverted, creative, I'll always be alone. I mean, you name it, it was. And we all have the same mind stories. We think we're so unique in our mind stories. We're not. And it was about really learning how to see the positive, see the silver lining in a lot of these negatives that I truly believed. And once I could accept myself, you know, empathy toward others must start with empathy toward ourselves. And I had no empathy toward myself. And I thought I had to be superhuman. And because of that, I believed everyone on my team needed to be superhuman, too. And I really wasn't that empathetic to issues going on in other people's lives because I wasn't empathetic to my own. So I think once I realized that actually I'm human, and that means I'm fallible, I'm imperfect, and I make mistakes. And that was a hard one, because as a perfectionist times a thousand, I had a really hard time admitting that I was going to make mistakes. So that took years. It took me five years, and I still have to work on it every day. But only when I could finally accept myself was I able to lead from a place of empathy. And that changed me. So what I finally did, after 30 years of leading another way, is I gave them permission to also be their authentic selves. And I now see what, you know, what a gift I denied them and how, you know, it took my own. My own evolution and my own having that empathy, self empathy, before I could show them the same sort of empathy.

And so what does authentic leadership look like now from your standpoint? How are you leaving from that place?

It's a great question. And I think it's about sharing our truth and not being scared to say, I'm having a hard day. Like, this is a really. I'm dealing with a few personal issues today. And, you know, having six kids, it's always a journey. And, you know, sometimes, you know, you're only as happy as your least happy child. I try not to be that way, but I still have a hard time if one of my kids is, you know, suffering. So I think there are days when I'm, like, really focused on a kid issue and I can't be my best. And I might have to say to my team, like, I know I seem distracted today, and I keep looking down because this child's texting me nonstop. And they'll be like, yeah, I'm with you on that. So I think it's just allowing yourself to be truthful and honest and know that I was always terrified that if I let in, even in inkling that it would be like a slippery slope and suddenly, you know, everybody would be, like, coming to me all day with. With one issue after another. And I realized that that was just very black or white thinking. And you. If you trust the people who work for you and you know that their intention is to be a productive employee, then you can also trust that, you know, it's okay if they have an issue in their lives to let them deal with it and tell them, of course you should deal with it. Like, this is. This is exactly what I would do. So I think I believe my relationships are. Are much more open and honest and that they're able to share what's going on in their lives with me. Yeah.

Wonderful. And it sounds like you had. I have this concept that I talk about playlists. Right. Your old playlist, which is the old statement that you told yourself, and learning to transition that to a new playlist. So your old playlist, based on what I heard, was something in the realm of I'm not accepted or I won't be accepted. Is that. Does that feel accurate for you, based on what you shared?

Yeah, it was the I am statement.

The belief about yourself.

Yeah. I would say I am unworthy as who I am. Yeah. Yeah. And always looking externally at what I believe society wanted from me and wanted me to be and defining myself by that. And the truth is that if you are going to be a creative, you are not going to be accepted by society, because creative people, if you're seeing things in your head, which I do, you're weird. I mean, you're going to be muttering to yourself. You're going to constantly be distracted because there's an idea that's brewing and you.