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A little while back, I took the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. I did it partly because I wanted to develop and apply those qualities at work and partly because I was spending a lot of time with my children and really wanted someone to point out my strengths for a change. (For those of you with children, I’d love to hear whether they have, at any point, compared you to a Lego Star Wars bad guy. Asking for a friend.)

As it turns out, my number one strength is Learner, which sounds less awesome than Maximizer, Activator or my personal favorite, Futuristic, but is indisputably accurate. The description read: You talk to, observe, or study individuals who produce nothing less than excellence to identify what inspires them.

Role Models

It’s true that throughout my personal and professional life, I’ve always found myself on the lookout for role models. Naturally, we seek out role models who most closely represent our circumstances and values and have created something we consider to be worth emulating. My role models have evolved over time; I no longer aspire to be Pippi Longstocking or Punky Brewster. At this stage in my life, my ideal role model is a woman in her 30’s to 40’s with children, a successful and fulfilling career, and a penchant for clutter clearing. Basically, Marie Kondo if Marie Kondo were a physician. (Just imagine if we got rid of everything in the hospital that doesn’t spark joy!)

There have always been remarkable women to look up to. As I strive to communicate more authentically, I’ve been encouraged to see a new category of role models emerge. The political powerhouse who speaks openly about her challenges.

In her recent speech to Parliament, then Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern spoke with unprecedented openness and vulnerability about her decision to resign.

I know there will be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so-called “real” reason was. I can tell you, that what I am sharing today is it. The only interesting angle you will find is that after going on six years of some big challenges, that I am human. Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.

Jacinda Ardern

Be Open About Your Challenges

Shortly after reading Ardern’s speech, I heard a podcast interview with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, another inspiring leader, in which she was asked what advice or guidance she would give to women who want to lead. Among the three things she mentioned was this: Be open about your challenges.

She went on to describe being in Brussels as a member of the European Parliament, where she was frequently invited to attend meetings that took place in the evenings.  Because she was there by herself with her two-year-old son, she repeatedly declined without explaining why she couldn’t attend. Finally, another member of Parliament, trying to schedule a meeting with her, asked why she couldn’t make it. Kallas reluctantly explained that she had to pick up her son from daycare. To which the other woman responded by saying: ‘I have kids, too! We can meet at the playground and have our meeting there.’

When we are transparent about our challenges, Kallas concludes, we may find that others share them, which opens the door to finding solutions together.

Vulnerability, Courage, and Trust

At work, we so often wear our challenges close to the chest, fearing that revealing them may result in being viewed as weak or less equipped to perform the job at hand. For women, this particularly applies to challenges around things like pregnancy, postpartum, breastfeeding and caretaking responsibilities. Because these are viewed as female issues, there is the understandable concern that disclosing our struggles will reinforce gender stereotypes that disadvantage us professionally.

Being open about our challenges requires vulnerability, which in turn requires courage and trust. Here’s the thing. I don’t think it’s a lack of courage that keeps us from being more open. I think it’s a lack of trust. We do not trust that our institutions will safeguard us from repercussions if we admit to being human.

I would love to say that we can safely put down our armor, that our concerns around being viewed as less capable are unwarranted. Unfortunately, for many of us, these fears are still very much based in reality.

The Talk

If you’ve ever had to have The Talk, you probably know the sense of anxiety and dread that accompanies it. No, I don’t mean explaining the birds and the bees to your kids, that’s a cakewalk by comparison. I mean the talk in which you tell your boss you are pregnant.

I’ve lived through The Talk three times now, each with very different outcomes- some supportive, some much less so. Mixed in with my anxiety about the response was an intense feeling of guilt. It was the sense that I had somehow made myself culpable by having a personal life in addition to a professional one, that it demonstrated a lack of commitment despite everything I had done to prove the opposite. That feeling of guilt was not born in a vacuum. It stems from being inundated with unhealthy messages about what professional ambition should and should not look like in a woman.

If you don’t trust that your employer will respond to The Talk with understanding and support, you’re in good company. Anxiety and dread are reasonable responses when faced with the very real possibility of overt gender bias in the workplace.

Gender Bias in the Workplace

A colleague of mine was told by her supervisor that, as a pregnant woman, her decision-making skills were liable to be impaired by excessive hormones. (She countered by saying that she didn’t think testosterone was all that helpful, either.)

A friend shared with me the time her supervising physician wrote ‘Career dip due to pregnancy’ in her official residency credentialing log during her annual evaluation.

Yet another colleague was informed that she would not be assigned to a NICU rotation after returning from maternity leave. She would first have to re-establish herself as competent on a lower acuity unit given the well-known cognitive decline in women after giving birth.

Upon informing her supervisors that she was pregnant, one pediatrician I know was confronted in the hallway by her department head and told in full view of patients and colleagues that he was deeply disappointed in her.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

A Tricky Dichotomy

These shockingly prevalent accounts of gender bias demonstrate why it’s so difficult for women to be open about our challenges even when we want to show up authentically. How, then, do we confront the dichotomy that leading effectively requires being open about our challenges and yet being open about our challenges can disqualify us from attaining leadership positions?

I don’t have a perfect answer, but here’s a start.

First, the higher up we are on the ladder, the more we must lead by example to normalize showing up authentically and vulnerably. Talk about why you can’t make the after-hours meeting. Tell others that you need twenty minutes to go pump. Say no to extra projects when you have an infant at home and just don’t have the capacity right now. Admit to struggling with mom guilt when your kid is the last one to be picked up from daycare. Reach out to your colleagues when you have a childcare crisis on your hands and see who can fill in for you. It doesn’t make us weak; it makes us real.

Connection Over Perfection

Second, we need to establish networks of allies and supporters within our workplaces by valuing connection over perfection.

I’ve written about perfectionism in past articles (How to be Whelmed and What We Gain When We Lose Control) and I mention it again here because it’s such a pervasive and driving force in the (professional) lives of women in particular.

The connection versus perfection cycle goes in both directions. On the one hand, sharing our struggles helps establish connection, which makes it safer to share them. On the other, the fear of being viewed as imperfect prevents us from sharing and thus from fostering the connections we need in order to feel safe doing so. To get on the right side of the cycle we may need to start small and gradually step outside our comfort zone. Because the fact is, if we can’t trust the institutions we work in with our full humanity, then we must create our own communities of trust within them.

Lastly, we have to look for role models that remind us we can show up with vulnerability and authenticity and still be powerhouses. And then become them.