Originally posted on Linkedin Pulse

This post is based on a speech I just gave on women in the workplace to theHarvard Undergraduate Women in Business Intercollegiate Business Convention, which brought together 1,200 extraordinary young women leaders from all over the U.S.  

When my first-born baby was two weeks old, I dropped her on the floor of the O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

One moment I held Sophia close in a baby sling as I wrestled a massive suitcase, two duffels as big as body bags and a diaper tote onto the X-ray machine at security.  The next, she somehow slipped between my body and the sling, straight onto the cold hard tiles of the terminal. 

I gasped as I scooped her into my arms, and it seemed part of a collective gasp from everyone around me. “She dropped her baby,” someone said. I dropped my baby, I thought. 

How did this happen? The short answer is: too much baggage. 

Sophia and I were on our way to live in Madagascar after I’d given birth in the U.S. I had packed anxiously as a first-time mother. In my oversize luggage, I had a year’s worth of baby supplies and clothes and medications and parenting books contemplating every eventuality. I was headed into the unknown as a first-time mother in a faraway place, and I was focused on all that could go wrong and all that I needed to get right.

But those bags were too numerous, too heavy, and too burdensome.  And in the scramble to haul them halfway across the world, I dropped my baby. 

(In case you’re getting worried, the good news is that Sophia bounced off the floor, was declared unharmed by paramedics, and is now a senior in high school, likely headed to a good college. She appears unscathed and, I am proud to say, still a girl who will find a way to wriggle free of anything that holds her back.)

Now what is likely clear as day to you, as vivid as if you were behind me in the security lane in Johannesburg, is that the baggage of expectations can be debilitating. In trying to guard against everything that could go wrong, in trying to play a role flawlessly before we even fully step into it, we drop the baby — the real baby, in my case, but also the metaphorical one — the precious, fledgling start of something that could grow into the remarkable if we just held on to it tightly, tighter than the baggage of our fears.

I am going to share with you the lesson I have learned over and over in my life, as a mother, as a wife, as a CEO: the secret to becoming your best self, flaws and all, is to put more energy into being who you are and less energy into hauling around your fears and expectations of who you are supposed to be. That baggage can cause you some real problems.

This sounds like common sense. But in my experience, and apparently that of about 30,000 other people, who were part of McKinsey and LeanIn.org’s recent study of what constrains women in the workplace, it is something that many of us are still learning.

Here’s what the study found:

1. Gender hinders progress: Women have a steeper climb to the top and get stuck in the “frozen middle” of management
2. Some of that lack of progress is due to fewer promotions, but what’s interesting is some is due to fewer women wanting promotions to top executive as they rise in the ranks
3. The top reasons women don’t seek promotions?
   • “I don’t want the stress/pressure”
   • “I don’t feel like I would be able to balance family/work commitments”
   • “I’m not interested in that kind of work”
   • “I’m not sure I could be successful”

The third reason feels fine to me — leading an organization is not for everyone, and that’s OK. But what concerns are the other answers. They are about anticipatory fear. We’re locking ourselves out of the C-Suite before we even knock on the door. 

I feel a personal obligation to share here my own experience, honestly, so that you can see that while there is some stress, and while work-life balance is challenge, and while you may have self-doubt, these are not barriers to leading.  Please don’t let them be.

There is nothing wrong with passing on being a top executive because you don’t want that role. But there is everything wrong with it if you’re holding onto your fears in such a way that your hands aren’t free to hold your own future.

So let me tell you the naked truth about what I’ve learned, the hard way, in the hopes of making your own leaps upward less scary.

1. Stress/pressure is a largely self-inflicted phenomenon. The worst stress and pressure you will encounter is that which you place on yourself.    When I am stressed and feeling pressure, it is more often due to my own standards for myself and my own fears of what could go wrong.  The antidote, in my experience, is to simply show up and do my best work, day by day.  Time spent agonizing over self-imposed standards I can’t meet or worrying about all that could go wrong is wasted time. Fearing failure before you even fail is silly. The greatest gift of my job has been I’ve had to learn how to better focus on the present moment and my span of control so I can accomplish everything I need to get done during the day. Commit yourself to each moment, and those moments slowly accrue into things that matter deeply. Learning this has made me a better person and a better leader.    
2. Work-life “balance” is a terrible term – this is not a zero sum game. It implies time spent at work is taking away from your family and vice versa.  If you live in a constant state of that kind of calculation, you will be miserable wherever you are.  Here are three ways to avoid that. 
   • Exhibit A: Acknowledge that you will be an imperfect parent, even if you work zero hours. Why did I tell you that embarrassing story at the beginning of this speech? Not only because it was conveniently symbolic and an apt metaphor. Because I was between jobs then! I was not working outside the home, yet I still dropped my baby on the floor of an airport terminal. Being a parent, being human, means things will go wrong. You may drop the ball occasionally in your work and your life, but you probably won’t drop your baby.
   • Exhibit B: You can make enough time for your family if you unapologetically be with them when it matters and unapologetically at work when you need to be there. And don’t keep score, just be where you are — with your kids or at work — without thinking of the other, as much as possible.  You need to be there for who is in front of you, because a little bit of that goes a very long way. It’s the dividing yourself up, existing in a state of unhappy distraction, that gives everyone the short shrift, including you. 
   • Exhibit C: Your children, if you choose to have them, will surprise you with their understanding — and what they absorb from the experience of you working. I had a long talk with my daughters before I took the job of CEO.  I told them it would be stressful and that I might be around less, though I would make every effort to be at important family events.  I also shared with them my fears as to whether I was up to the job.  They said, “Mom, it’s so cool, you’ve got to do it, you will crush it!” And then the most interesting thing happened when I became a CEO.  I didn’t only change my own sense of the possible, I changed theirs.  Sophia, fully recovered from the airport incident, is a leader all she does. My younger daughter Kate became a star public speaker and successfully ran for class representative. I didn't take away something from my daughters. I gave them a model of what is possible.
3. Now for that last fear on the list: “I’m not sure I can be successful.” I’m not of sure of success in all things either, but I go to work every day, anyway.  There are even days when I wonder if someone is going to show up and say my job was all a mistake. The term for that is imposter syndrome.  I really don’t like that term for two reasons.  First, it implies that we have a disease that has to be cured — a syndrome — and second, because it’s about trying to be who we are not.  You may never cure yourself of feeling the outsider, but being different can be very powerful.  When I am my full self, I am at my best.  And when I try to be who I am not, I fail.

Last year, I had an important meeting with a group of investors out in Silicon Valley, a place where I, as a woman, sometimes feel out of place. I drafted my presentation. Then, out of fear, I completely changed it. I told myself I couldn’t be successful doing it my way, so I let some well-intentioned stakeholders reframe it, based on their perspective, values and view. And when I presented the new version, it was like telling someone else’s story.  And it was bad.  I didn’t trust myself to know what the room needed to hear. I was an imposter.

The good news is the universe decided to give me a second chance, as it often does when we fall down.  I got a second shot a month later. I was even more worried this time. “I don’t feel comfortable,” I lamented to a friend. “I’m not one of them.” I was already packing my fears for the trip.

“You’re right,” she said. “You’re not one of them. The goal is not to be one of them, it’s to be yourself.” 

As my teenage daughters would say, “le duh.”

And so I was myself. I started the presentation by saying, “I appreciate the mulligan.” Then I gave the presentation that was right for that audience and right for me, and it went just fine. Being your unique self is always going to go over better than faking someone else.

If I ever write my memoir, I won’t call it “imposter syndrome.”  I’ll call it something else — “the great pretender.” Pretend comes from the latin “prae” – before - and “tendere” – to stretch. It means to stretch forth. I aspire to be a great stretcher. 

Or you can define pretend as in “make believe.” Make yourself believe in you. 

All you need is a bit of courage. Courage does not mean that you aren’t afraid.  It means you’re afraid, and you do it anyway. Do it, whatever is that ambition you might be too shy to speak aloud even to yourself. Do it anyway.