The Mask We Wear

I can't think of a better way to start the new year than by discussing the reality of imperfection: by talking about the thousand ways we think everyone else is doing better than they really are.

Recently, on a Zoom call, I caught myself doing something funny. My manicure was in terrible shape: chipped polish, broken edges, the works. So I just kept my hands out of the frame or backwards, and no one ever knew.

That's one thing Zoom gives us: the ability to curate our reality. You can have a composed expression, a tidy background, smart observations, and two inches off-screen, life can be an unruly mess. Bad nails. Piles of laundry. Stress you'd never guess from the small square people see.

But here's the thing I've been thinking about: The way we carefully can present ourselves on Zoom reminds me a lot of the way organisations present themselves to the world.

On the outside, the messaging is polished and controlled. "We're strong. We're thriving. Everything is on track."

And inside? Inside, there may be confusion, overwhelm, tension. A backlog of work nobody can get through. Decisions that didn't go well. Leaders staying up at night wondering how to fix what's broken before anyone notices.

On a recent call, an executive shared a powerful story. His company had grown fast, faster than their systems and infrastructure could keep up with. Eventually, the consequences caught up. Key partners left. Inside the company, it was very clear how serious the situation was.

And you know what they did? They told the truth, at least internally. They looked in the mirror. They asked, How did we get here? What did we miss? What must change?

They rebuilt, they invested, and they changed what needed to change operationally. And ten months later, the executive could proudly say they had become one of the strongest underwriting brokerages in the country.

But here's the detail that stuck with me: Externally, the messaging stayed measured and sanitized. Because that's how business works. We don't generally issue press releases saying, "We really messed this up."

And that's when it clicked for me: Leaders everywhere are comparing their messy, honest, behind-the-scenes reality to everyone else's carefully curated surface-level narrative. As they would say in 12-step, "Comparing their insides to other people's outsides."

It's the business equivalent of hiding your chipped manicure.

But when we do that, several things happen: We assume everyone else is navigating change more cleanly than we are. We believe our internal chaos is unusual instead of normal. We get lonelier. And we feel just a little bit fraudulent.

The irony is if you talk privately with almost any executive, they'll say some version of: "Oh, this place is a mess." Not because they're failing, but because running a company is inherently messy. Especially through growth, change, downturns, reorganisations, or strategic pivots.

And yet we rarely say that out loud. We wear the mask. We keep our metaphorical chipped manicures out of the Zoom frame. But here's the leadership opportunity:

There is enormous cultural power in simply telling the truth, calmly, responsibly, and without drama. Not oversharing or melting down, just naming reality:

"We are strong in these ways."

"And we are struggling in these ways."

When leaders do that, people exhale and trust increases. The energy shifts from protecting the image to solving the problem.

And as with that brokerage leader, when the truth is acknowledged, repair becomes possible. Teams step up and systems evolve as the organisation grows up a notch.

I'm not naïve. There are legal, competitive, and reputational reasons leaders can't always reveal everything externally. But inside your own walls? Your people already know when things are off-track. The truth is that honesty doesn't damage reputation. Pretending does. There is nothing so beautiful as the feeling of being told the truth after you already know it.

So the next time you're tempted to compare yourself to the polished surface of another organisation, remember: They probably have chipped areas too. You're just not seeing them.

And the more courage we have to gently remove the mask, to align what's true with what's spoken, the more we can unleash the talents of ourselves and our people.

This was also published on Juliet Funt's LinkedIn.

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