I first heard the title phrase used by an executive coach, Karen Struntz Gravenstine, who was working with a group of us at the Higher Ambition Leadership Institute (HALI) the day we received a large packet of 360 degree feedback and our results on various Korn Ferry Hay Group instruments. The 360 feedback aggregated perspectives of over 20 of our colleagues who interacted with us closely, observed our behaviors, and had the pleasure and/or pain of working with us. The research-based instruments had been administered and validated based on data from over a million leaders.
With the clarity only an external perspective can bring, we each gained valuable insights regarding our leadership style profile, our emotional intelligence, our social competency, and the health of climate we created as leaders of teams. Speaking truth to power, this type of feedback creates self-awareness and provides helpful insights we might never fully see without the perspectives of others’ experience of us.
In the five years since this pivotal exercise, the phrase has stuck with me. It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle. This simple metaphor provides a powerful realization that we are not the best assessor of how we are showing up and performing. We may think or feel that we are either killing it or failing, but the bias of our own self-judgment can cloud our perspective. Psychologists have long realized that the self-report given by a person is the least reliable source of data collection. It is something I’ve been thinking about a lot these past few months. How am I doing…Professionally? Personally? As a boss? A leader? A mother? A wife? What do I really need right now to move from surviving to thriving? How do I get there?
Letting go of self-judgement and self-doubt
Last weekend on Mother’s Day, I was taken by a series in the New York Times that profiled twelve mothers, asking each woman to highlight a super strength that made them “a great mom.” The opening line of the article stated how common it was for women, particularly mothers, to catalogue their failures with clarity and totally overlook their strengths. This poignant statement hit me smack between my eyes and caused me to pause.
Inside the bottle of my mind, left untamed my innervoice is my worst critic, cruely judging my inadequacies as a mother, wife, employee, and leader. In times of stress, fatigue, and overwhelm, like anyone, I am more susceptible to believing this harsh self-assessment and ignoring my own humanity as someone who has permission to make mistakes. Common among high-performing women, the unconscious pursuit of perfectionism can take hold in these moments, resulting in internalizing perceived failures whenever we fall short of the (potentially unrealistic) expectations we place on ourselves. Now more than ever, I needed some more data and perspective to get an accurate read of how I was actually doing to help me wrestle back that pesky innervoice.
Inside the bottle of my mind, left untamed my innervoice is my worst critic, cruely judging my inadequacies as a mother, wife, employee, and leader.
Tapping into your support team with intention
A dear friend recently encouraged me to think intentionally about who was on “Team Mary” and how I might lean on these people for support, empathy, encouragement, and perspective. She also cautioned me from giving too much time or power to those who didn’t authentically have my best interest in mind. She praised me for my efforts championing “Team Zachary” and “Team Natalie,” my children, and challenged me to do better in my own self-care/self-love.
I feel fortunate that I have a loving family and some dear friends. Dubbing my husband, Matt, the captain of “Team Mary,” we had a fun and honest conversation about my tendency to forget how much support I actually have and patterns of repeatedly going the wrong people or sources to get what I need. He reminded me of the definition of insanity commonly attributed to Albert Einstein.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
– Possibly Albert Einstein
I am blessed with so many special people in my life, but just like knowing each member of your team at work and their strengths and skill sets in determining staffing, I needed to be more strategic in tapping into different members of “Team Mary.” I also needed to be more aware and honest with myself about what I really needed in each moment. Was it reassurance? Was it validation? Did I just want to vent? If I needed to blow off steam, seeking out someone who was going to default to reassuring me wasn’t helpful and it wasn’t fair to that loved one either. I’d beat myself up after the call for “being dramatic” or dismissive of their assurances. If I was seeking validation, tapping into a problem-solver who would likely give me critical feedback would leave me feeling invalidated and send me into an unproductive spiral of questioning the approach I’d already taken. I needed everyone in my village, but for different things.
If I wanted unconditional love and a cheerleader to tell me I was doing great, no one can beat my mom! If I needed empathy and someone to just acknowledge that this is really hard and kind of sucks right now, my best friend, Allison, was the place to go. If I need enlightened ideas, to feel seen, or to compare notes with another executive mom of young children, my sister-in-law, Ilana Stern, is such a gem. For support as a fellow “Super Mom of Special Kids,” my mom-friend Allyson instantly got it. For a laugh and joyful escape paired with exceptional cooking and fine wine, our friends, Warren & Aline, take the cake (or some fancy gourmet dessert).
At work, a seasoned executive, Maxine Simon, has stepped up as a mentor, sounding board, and northstar navigating tricky situations. She isn’t afraid to tell me the way it is or challenge my thinking, giving me wise perspective that only experience can bring. We also have a few world-class doctors from the NYU Child Study Center, Dr. Berry, Dr. Diaz, Dr. Spira, and Hanifa Cavanna, NP that devotedly work with our family and the ever-changing dynamic within our household. They bring the knowledge-base of seeing thousands of families on a similar journey and truly appreciate the challenges facing parents with neurodiverse kiddos. To round out the team, I have some incredible colleagues, my generous and steady in-laws, a loving extended family, and two doting mini goldendoodles.
It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle
As I’ve gotten better about acknowledging that there is a “Team Mary, I’ve felt much less alone and the load I’m carrying on behalf of my company and my family has felt much easier to bear with grace and fewer freak-out moments. As I’ve increased the intentionality of who within Team Mary that I go to when I need various kinds of support, I’ve been amazed at the incredible depth and diversity of these relationships. Taking the word and perspective of people I trust, I am better able to find my own inner strength and authentically lead my team and my family through tumultuous waters to higher ground.
In turn, I’ve become more aware and committed to the teams I’m on in supporting others that I love (e.g., Team Matt, Team Cheryl, Team Allison, Team Aline) and those I’m entrusted to lead, increasingly focused on how I can best support each of them to reach their full potential. The equanimous nature of these relationships make them deeply fulfilling.
The clarity with which members of my support team can identify and articulate exactly what I need, despite me not being able to see it for myself, has been surprising and helpful! Here are some touching examples.
On a recent girls-only weekend, my best friend shared the observation that I needed significantly more childcare than I had in place since COVID upended everything. Knowing me for as long as I’ve been a mother, she flat out told me I couldn’t do it all, and didn’t need to. She strongly encouraged me to consider getting an au pair. Yes, I had been feeling overwhelmed and inadequate in my parenting, but hadn’t realized it was for lack of childcare support. My husband and I had thought about it in the past and ruled it out, but our situation has now changed and we jumped on the idea. I am already feeling relief as we wait for an amazing young woman named Clarice to join our family from Brazil and the wrap-around support having live-in help with provide.
About four months back, our next door neighbor and retired elementary school teacher was talking to my husband and I about our son’s progression in reading. Hearing a few of our concerns and observations, she introduced us to a didactic method of teaching bright children who are struggling to learn to read (PAF) and told us about the Windward School. Fast forward a few months and the resources she introduced us to are EXACTLY what our son needs. We are excited that Zachary will be joining the Windward School next fall. There is consolation in recognizing that we as parents don’t have to know everything or have all the answers.
A couple weeks back, I shared an article about dyslexia with our parents and siblings. My sister-in-law immediately wrote back “I’m so glad that Zachary’s soul chose you as his mother.” First off, what a beautiful thing to say, but it opened up the spigot of hearing from my family that they were proud of the systematic way my husband and I had approached getting supports lined up for our son. I was shocked to hear multiple members of the family expressing that they thought I was the ideal mom for Natalie and Zachary. I hadn’t even considered that I could be perceived as doing a “good job.” Hearing this, freed me from some of the guilt and shame I wasn’t aware I had been carrying.
A 20-year perspective
The insights I’ve gained from others, coupled with the insights I’ve gained from my own reflection and thought anchor my thinking in a longitudinal perspective that cannot be achieved in simply living day-to-day. This past week, I took a long-overdue week off to rest up, get a few things in order for my household, and dabble in this space defined as “self-care.” One exercise I hadn’t done since my time at HALI was creating a 20-year perspective scroll. You tape together two pieces of paper, draw a line down the middle, and start logging personal and professional accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned above and below the line.
Since it had only been five years since doing this exercise, I went back to 2016, leaving adequate white space in 2020 to catalogue milestones in an indescribable year. Looking forward, I plotted out the next 15-years. Perhaps not surprising, but still unsettling, I teared up in seeing that 15 years from now, Matt and I will be empty nesters. Identifying patterns when zoomed out this far, I projected what likely will happen in my personal life with my immediate family and parents. Professionally, I bifurcated my future into a couple different tracks. While in many ways, this exercise is a bit of looking into a crystal ball and making stuff up, it also drove clarity on how I’d grown in the better part of a decade I’ve been responsible for the Strategy, Planning, and Business Development at NYU Langone. Together with my professional “Team Mary,” I was able to acknowledge growth I’ve seen in myself, as well as the growth of the team’s breadth and depth in this period. It was motivating to think ahead to what we could more of to better support the enterprise, challenging myself to rise to the occasion.
As a community of people trying to help one another do and be better personally and professionally, we owe it to each other to help be that mirror of perspective and to be kind in doing so. Sometimes it takes the form of 360 feedback or being willing to challenge another at work to think differently or build a necessary competency. Sometimes it takes the form of being interpersonally agile and tuned in to exactly the type of support a person needs in a given moment. I’ve long been a believer that our words matter, as does intentional reflection. To those members of Team Mary, I cannot thank you enough! I appreciate that I have not acknowledged each of you by name, but you are each in my heart and inspire me to be better everyday. Without you, I’d be swimming alone in my own bottle, likely a California Chardonnay.
“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
– Proverbs 27:17
