Un-Veiled: How to Dissolve Illusions and Achieve Our Greatest Potential

I felt my stomach drop as I looked at his face. “Mr. VP” had invited me into his office to provide feedback for my development, but his face showed deep aggravation and tension. I had asked a question during a group meeting about how our numbers compared to those of our main competitor, a standard strategic benchmarking question. He was unprepared for the question and as a result became angry with me after the meeting. And through his demeanor and language as we sat in his office, he demonstrated to me both his disapproval and his power.

And I did what generations of women and minority groups before me have done. I did the magic metamorphosis of survival, transforming before his very eyes from a thoughtful leader into something small he wouldn’t have to feel insecure about.

By the end of this conversation in his office, Mr. VP said in a moment of self-awareness, “Sometimes I get a little worked up.” This was his version of an apology as he began to calm down and more clearly see how he was interacting with me, a colleague several levels more junior. Despite his apology, I left feeling emotionally drained and violated.

This incident was not my best moment as a leader, nor was it Mr. VP’s. Both of us were operating from unconscious drivers that obscured our view of what was really happening (i.e. the “veils” shown metaphorically in the cover art for this article). As I spoke with other women in our organization, I heard similar stories about disempowering executive interactions. It had developed into an accepted norm in our workplace culture. Let’s consider together in the next few minutes how these types of interactions impact a business, how we can dissolve the veils that keep us from our greatest potential, and how this journey can be applied both at individual leadership and enterprise leadership levels.

The true cost of ineffective leadership

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Unfortunately, situations where employees feel disempowered and devalued are more common in companies than they should be, and the long-term implications are not surprising. A 2021 Deloitte study of 5,000 U.S. employees found that by the time women reached the director level, they trust their employers 30% less than men at the same level. A 2023 McKinsey study of certain minority groups in the United Kingdom found that these women of color received fewer job and promotional opportunities, less mentorship and feedback, and lower salaries than peers who were white. A diversity audit by the Bank of England in 2021 found that ethnic minorities, including those at the same performance rating as their white peers, were 25% more likely to quit their job. It’s no surprise that factors like trust, feeling valued, and having your needs met matter to people in the workplace, or that turnover is a very costly proposition for employers. Gallup estimates that voluntary turnover costs U.S. companies a whopping $1 trillion per year.

Much later after our exchange in his office, Mr. VP sat at a talent management circle along with other executives (most of who shared his gender and ethnicity), wondering why the company was losing our talent to competitors, and assuming the answer lay fully outside the company walls (i.e. “the competition pays better”, “it’s just a tough market”, etc.).

I have found in my work with senior executives that leaders fall into the trap of spending the majority of time talking about “the what” (e.g. financials, outcomes, tactical updates), with a much smaller portion dedicated to talking about “the how” (core strategies, people), and almost no time on “the why” (core mission and value proposition of the organization, deeper assessment of root cause for key issues). Unfortunately, this only works when you already have in place a clear vision, strong foundational people culture and strategies, and effective mechanisms to evaluate and refresh them.

In today’s dynamic business landscape there are few organizations that can claim they have these in place. This is primarily due to a lack of effective transformational strategic planning when there are large shifts in their industry, changes in senior leadership ranks, mergers, acquisitions, or major pipeline deals (all common, especially for larger companies). That’s why for most leaders it’s critical to keep in mind that “the why” fuels “the how” which results in “the what”. Essentially, our focus is backwards from where it is most needed to really help our organizations thrive, not just today but into the future.

Probably the hardest thing is asking ourselves what our role is when something isn’t working well. Bringing greater attention to “the why” and “the how” involves a willingness to pull back the veil and closely examine the parts we don’t understand, don’t want to see, or have ignored for a long time.

Exploring behind the veil

Let’s start with using this lens at the personal leadership level in my exchange with Mr. VP.

There were two people behaving as “ineffective leaders” in that room. Real development is always about “leaving someone bigger” and ultimately helping them realize their potential. What Mr. VP did was about him, not about me. And how I reacted was about the social norms still quietly in effect in many workplaces… and also about me.

It was years later when I realized that I owned what “happened to me” in that room. Mr. VP was where he was in his own development journey, but so was I. I chose to allow myself to become small, instead of living into my own potential. A wiser version of me observing that room would have shown compassion for the fear underlying Mr. VP’s reaction, while also asking powerful yet humble questions that allowed us to get to a better place, both with our strategies and with the culture in our organization. (Luckily this is a learnable skill!)

In exploring behind the veil, I learned that I shrank in that office that day due to my own fear... fear of safety and fear of loss of community and relationship. The moment had triggered in me an old “super fear” from my own childhood growing up as an immigrant kid of a single parent. This was my veil to own, and it could only have power so long as I did not notice I was acting from that place of fear.

Being willing to explore behind the veil even when there are things we don’t understand or like is demonstrated in the above ‘un-veiling’ of the cover painting for this article. True wisdom and ability to act from our deepest leadership power comes from recognizing these things that have us operating small and, in seeing them clearly, loosening their power over us. It feels more comforting or easy sometimes to blame someone or something external when we don’t like the view (like the executives discussing attrition at that talent management circle), but the benefits of exploring behind our veils extend far beyond conflict management. Within ourselves, we control the depth to which we reach to see potential solutions – seeing with new eyes, seeing with a greater degree of clarity and creativity, and seeing with the help of diverse perspectives to resolve whatever we are facing.

This concept applies not just to interpersonal conflicts but to everything in today’s rapidly evolving world. Over the past few decades the terminology of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) became very popular in leadership lexicon, and that concept of adapting to a dynamic world has taken on even more meaning post-COVID and with new expectations from an evolving workforce. “The idea of a VUCA world is much more dynamic now than it’s ever been,” commented Laila Tarraf , who has served multiple organizations as Chief People Officer and is the author of Strong Like Water. “This makes it even more critical for leaders to test assumptions, take a broader perspective, shift and look at things differently, and practice true agility. Your painting with the veil in place looks more serene but also static. Look at how much more energy the painting has once the veil is removed and you see the broader, dynamic elements. There’s a lot more possibility in the broader picture.”

Seeing from multiple angles to more deeply understand

One of the reasons it’s critical to re-examine challenges from multiple angles is that we cannot always see things clearly from the get-go, even if we have the fearlessness to start looking behind the veil. Looking at things in a different light can reveal new possibilities (illustrated metaphorically below by using different lighting on the same painting to reveal previously muted elements). Leveraging a different light can include looking at new data or soliciting the diverse perspectives of others.

Though we are still behind where we need to be in all kinds of human equity in the workplace, more and more data is quantifying the financial implications of harnessing diverse perspectives. A 2020 data set from McKinsey (1,039 companies in 15 countries) found that organizations with robust ethnic-minority representation in leadership teams are 33-36% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability. Above-average profitability trends were also found for organizations with gender diversity on executive teams. What senior executive wouldn’t dream of greater profitability?

Diversity is inherently a powerful differentiator for a leadership team – it automatically grants new perspectives and backgrounds from which to assess and understand a situation. It can also be a very powerful tool in our personal leadership journeys, where diversity includes having mentors who don’t look like you. “That perspective from another person is key,” says Debbie Drane , a Senior Vice President at a global biotechnology company. “Diverse ways of looking at a challenge will always teach you more. I remember early in my career a male mentor of mine was the first one to tell me I was just as good as the men around me and to take more of a chance in speaking up.”

Addressing veils at an enterprise level

This willingness to look behind the veil is also a challenge at the enterprise level. It starts with a willingness to look at your own data as an organization, because you can’t fully access new possibilities until you begin to shine a light and seek to understand. At the afore-mentioned talent meeting, Mr. VP and the other executives made a lot of assumptions about external factors driving attrition, and this prevented them from building more holistic solutions. What could that team of leaders have gained by willingness to develop and explore organizational data and other perspectives to address challenges????

Let’s consider an example of what it takes to do this. In 2015, the chairman and CEO of Aetna, a large American health insurance company, announced an increase to the minimum wage being paid to Aetna employees. In interviews the CEO talks about the resistance and lack of data he faced when he first started asking questions on this topic, questions that arose for him as he spent more time interacting with his employees. And when they did look behind the veil and shine that light, the CEO and his team saw that more than 10% of their workforce were struggling as low-income wage earners to afford benefits, health care coverage, etc. When they dug into the data further, they saw that most of these workers were women and the vast majority were single parents. As the CEO kept pushing, they came to a sound people and business decision – they would invest $10.5 million per year in increased salary, and offset this by the $120 million per year in turnover costs they had assessed. The CEO encountered a lot of resistance in the form of organizational veils along the journey. It took not just a stalwart leader, but new data sources and diverse perspectives to come to a solution.

Senior executives who are undaunted by the status quo can also choose to pull the veils off and see with fresh eyes the potential of a new landscape – a process that’s simpler early in the growth stages of an enterprise when there are fewer institutional veils in place. That’s what Netflix’s CTO (T = talent) and CEO did more than a decade ago when they rewrote the rules for employee engagement. The leadership vision of this duo (note, a woman and a man), informed by employee perspectives, ultimately created a culture document that went viral with tens of millions of views. They recognized that as companies grow they tend to get more complex, bureaucratic, and process-driven in order to protect near-term outcomes. They also recognized that this same approach stifles innovation, disempowers strong talent, and prevents agility and long-term growth as this less nimble organization struggles to respond to the dynamic marketplace. Rather than assume what other companies were doing was right for them, they chose to challenge the status quo veils with creation of a new culture paradigm. They espoused a culture of creativity, self-discipline, and responsibility born of freedom, where they paid top dollar for top talent. They painted a new landscape of how to engage this talent pool as trusted partners in making the business successful, and it penetrated everything in the company’s approach. This meant creative equity compensation options, not tracking vacation usage (take what you need and “come back inspired to find big ideas”), replacing formal annual performance reviews with informal 360 reviews, and the most concise corporate expense policy (5 words only, “Act in Netflix’s Best Interest”). The result? Enviable growth in revenue and market capitalization, and the ability to challenge HBO’s long-time streak for most Emmy nominations in a year. ????

The journey of dissolving our veils

Dissolving our illusions is about moving our core operating base from fear and assumptions to Wisdom (illustrated in the figure below). Fear is used here as a state of mind rather than a simple emotion. On a personal level, this leads us from a place where we feel small and everything is difficult, to a place where we live into our limitless potential and challenges are just opportunities to grow along the way. It moves us from narrow thinking to creative thinking, from not valuing differences to building tremendous new outcomes due to these differences. Indeed, it unlocks outcomes we could not possibly imagine when we are leading from a small place or taking assumptions as our reality. It is not an easy journey, but it’s the only journey that matters if we’re seeking to achieve our greatest potential as individuals and as organizations.

Making progress on this leadership journey starts with practicing mindfulness and self-compassion. Mindfulness teachers sometimes use the acronym RAIN as a tool for this (widely used and adapted from the original introduction by Michele McDonald):

1.??????Recognize what is happening. Start by noticing when you’re experiencing the symptoms of operating from “fear” as shown in the figure above. We do this many times a day in small ways: Ugh, Jane is at this meeting - she’s just going to shoot down my ideas again... There’s no way they’d consider me for that job… He cut me off in the parking lot – must be a jerk!... You may have noticed it’s energy-draining to operate from this place.

2.??????Allow the experience to be. When you notice yourself operating from “fear”, all it takes is being aware of it at first – you don’t need to reject what you’re experiencing.

3.??????Investigate with gentle interest and thoughtful questions. It can be helpful to know the root of the fear, but that’s not required for the dissolution process at a personal level.

4.??????Nurture with self-compassion. This isn’t about kicking yourself. You should feel good about having enough self-awareness to recognize the fear for what it is.?

This is a dissolution process because simply peeking behind the veil once isn’t enough to remove it – most veils have been built over our lifetime and take continual habit to dissolve. True lasting change comes over time from frequent occurrences of this mindfulness, which eventually and naturally opens up access to operate from a deeper and deeper place of Wisdom. Simple is not “easy” but it is effective, as the “Wisdom muscle” gets stronger with repetition and practice until it is self-perpetuating and energy-creating (to an astonishing degree!). There are many other practices for cultivating mindfulness easily available online including in my article on ‘Deep Rest’, where I include ‘mini’ and ‘micro’ examples accessible to even the busiest people. I’ve also previously written about how we can leverage our ‘Big Why’ to fuel this journey of uncovering our potential, where mountains become molehills and “tsunamis become toe ticklers” (as I illustrate in that article’s painting).

As for developing organizational wisdom, organizations are made up of people, so start by looking in the mirror and preparing yourself to ask thoughtful questions that will pave the pathway to Wisdom. At an enterprise level, some of the veils encountered will be personal (including ‘veils’ adopted by groups of people within the organization) and some will be systemic veils that require new or different data sources and perspectives at the table. ?

Achieving our greatest potential

Dissolving our veils and leading from Wisdom are all about unlocking our greatest, limitless potential. The idea that we are inherently limitless has been a core tenet for the best minds of our and prior generations. It does require us as a first step to look beyond the obvious and begin dissolving the illusions or assumptions that hold us back from our deeply creative and expansive Wisdom. I appreciate the way the esteemed Stephen Hawking described one of my favorite scientists: “Einstein had the ability to look beyond the surface to reveal the underlying structure. He was undaunted by common sense, the idea that things must be the way they seemed. He had the courage to pursue ideas that seemed absurd to others. And this set him free to be ingenious…” Stephen Hawking also said about himself, “I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe.”

Are you ready to dissolve your veils and be boundary-less? What helps you along that leadership journey towards your greatest potential? I’d love to hear from you.

#transformation #growth #mindfulness #creativity #womenleaders

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Loddie Foose, PhD is passionate about uncovering the limitless potential of people and organizations. Original cover art “Veiled” (2023) by her accompanies this article.?