Someone recently told me a story about them being in a meeting and feeling that they had to perform the whole time, they just couldn’t be themselves. In order to feel safer in the room they felt that they had to wear that slightly polished, slightly armoured version of who they truly are.

I think we can all relate to that moment – we’ve all been there at some point in time. And many times we put that mask on without even noticing.

I received a study recently from a colleague that brought this scenario to life perfectly and it’s really stuck with me

A psychologist in the 1970s wanted to study self-doubt and had two groups of people to capture the learnings.

He drew a scar on one group of people’s faces and then showed them their reflection. The second group had a clear face and then both groups went out to talk to strangers.

When they came back, the scarred group said they felt judged, that people were cold and that the conversations didn’t flow very well. The group without the scar said the conversations were great. There were no complaints.

On the face of it, this study would be interesting from the point of view of discrimination and stigma. But this is actually when it gets interesting. 

What actually happened before the group with the scar went out was that the researcher said he needed to pass some oil on the scar so it didn’t crack. But what he actually did was remove the scar altogether. Both groups in fact looked identical.

The scar was gone. But the self-doubt wasn’t.

This quote from Anaïs Nin is perfect (we use it all of the time in our work): we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

It’s so true, isn’t it?

When I was talking to another friend about this study she told me about a meeting she recently joined virtually.

It was the first ever meeting on a new project, with a brand new team of people. She felt the pressure. While the rest of the team sat together in person, there she was, her face projected on the massive screen in the room. It was super unnerving, and she said she felt the pull to perform her way through it, to seem on top of everything.

But what actually helped was doing the exact opposite.

She had received this same study from a colleague around the same time, and as she reflected on the study it made her stop and be honest with herself and with the team in the meeting. She explained the reality – that she was joining remotely, that she was new, and that her role in that meeting was to listen before she could contribute.

She told me that something shifted the moment when she stopped trying to hide the situation and just told the truth about it.

What I keep coming back to is that the masks we wear are almost never about ego. They are mostly about protection.

We often walk into meetings carrying a story: that we are not senior enough, or too much, or behind, or that we don’t belong, or we need to sound smarter. There are so many things we tell ourselves.  And then as a result, without realising it, we start performing a version of ourselves instead of actually connecting.

But here is what we need to remember. People don’t connect to the polished version of ourselves. They connect to the real one.

I see this all the time in TIE Leadership programmes. The moment people stop performing and start showing up more honestly, something always shifts. You see people physically start to lean in and trust each other. The group softens and you can see that they feel more comfortable with one another.

And this connection doesn’t happen because they are perfect. It happens because they are human.

And to me, this is the Return on Humanity.