Pillar 1: The Compelling Practice of Self-Awareness
Utilize This Technique to Understand Our Work, and Ourselves, Inclusively.
When I was 37, I realized that I had no idea who I was.
My sense of identity and self-worth had disappeared (read more about my personal journey in this blog). I started to believe my life was worthless, which was exacerbated by being sent to conversion therapy. Soon, I was on a path toward suicide. I believed that if I didn’t know who I was, it wouldn’t matter if I lived or died.
Fortunately, I found help. As I sought freedom from the hopeless cycle of self-loathing and self-doubt, the ladder I used to climb out of this destructive pit was the practice of self-awareness. It empowered me to understand myself once more—to love and find value and worth in who I am as a person. I had to rip apart every facade I had built in my attempt to play it safe. I had to destroy every filtered reality, and I needed to dig deep to uncover the truth of who I was.
Self-awareness is the intentional observation of our thoughts, actions, and emotions without judgment. It is how we uncover the internalized racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we all have so we can develop authentic and sustainable allyship.
Professionally, self-awareness allows us to become inclusive leaders.
We cannot be true allies or build a practice of inclusive leadership—or be authentic to ourselves or anyone else—without a developed practice of self-awareness.
Factory Setting vs. Authentic Setting
The self-awareness practices I had developed during my self-healing journey became the cornerstone of my professional work in inclusive leadership. When I presented the foundation of my work in my 2019 TEDx talk, I used the terms “mindfulness” and “self-awareness” interchangeably. I find that when speaking with corporate audiences, the term “self-awareness” is more likely to resonate and be more easily understood, however the meaning is the same: The intentional observation of our thoughts, emotions, and actions, without judgment. This last part is key, and I use the following example to illustrate why.
Think of your “reality” as a photo on your phone. The photo is just a collection of pixels and combination of colors—there is no moral judgment about the raw data. But what if we open that photo in Instagram and put a filter on top of it? The filter has not changed any of the raw data, or the reality, but it has changed our perception of the reality.
Without self-awareness, we interact with a similarly false reality. We never really understand what is true and what’s not. We don’t know if what we’re saying and doing is actually authentic to who we are as a person, or if it’s what I refer to as “a Factory Setting”—when we think, feel, respond, or act based upon our past experiences and the world around us; not according to the reality underneath the filter.
Self-awareness allows us to, first, acknowledge that the filter is there and second, to let it fade away so that we can work within the reality of who we are—one might call that “the Authentic Setting”.
The danger of living and working without self-awareness is that we remain largely unaware of whether a “Factory Setting” is hurting us and/or the people we value. When we live in a “Factory Setting”, we exhibit our internalized racism, homophobia, and transphobia without even realizing it, which is otherwise known as “unconscious bias.” These biases not only affect those around us, but they deeply impact our own selves, as well, and keep us from becoming inclusive leaders.
Let’s take internalized homophobia, which is the involuntary belief that the homophobic lies, stereotypes and myths are true (and of which every person raised in Western society possesses, regardless of identity) and its stepchild, compulsory heteronormativity. Compulsory heteronormativity is the idea that heterosexuality is the default in our world. We assume those we meet are straight, and that their gender is either man or woman, given by assigned (and often stereotyped) cues. We assume our teenage son is taking a girl to prom. We assume our teenage daughter will shave her armpits, and that her brother will not. Compulsory heteronormativity is the reason why doctors’ brains short circuit when I confirm, “yes, I am sexually active”, but “no, there is absolutely no possibility that I’m pregnant”. #CompHet, as the kids call it, is the reason so many of us, myself included, don’t realize our sexual orientation until later in life. The “Factory Setting” of internalized homophobia and compulsory heteronormativity prevented me from realizing who I really am; my actual reality.
The idea that I was different from “the norm” created a blanket of shame that I layered on top of my reality, just as an Instagram filter is layered upon a photo, so that I could live life as it should be. It prevented me from seeing who I was and from figuring it out so much earlier in my life. Professionally, it prevented me from acting as an inclusive leader.
The Light Meter Exercise
About a year after I came out, I sat down to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race for the first time. The show quickly made me angry.
At this point, I was deep into my self-awareness practices and determined to never hide from myself again. One of the practices I used is called “Light Meter”.
In photography, there is a number line with 0 in the middle and positive numbers, +1, +2, +3, etc. going to the right and negative numbers stretching to the left. In my self-awareness practice, I became so in tune with my emotions that I’d know if something registered as more than a +1 or -1 on my meter, I should wave a proverbial red flag, and recognize, “hey, there’s something to learn about myself here”.
So during that episode of Drag Race, I noticed I was feeling around a -2, and so I needed to get real with myself.
I dug deeper and realized the anger that was coming to the surface was from an internalized idea, a “Factory Setting”, that men performing in drag was a power move—a way to take money, power, and influence away from women. That thought pissed me off. I knew I was angry while watching a show that the LGBTQ+ community generally loves. I felt ashamed that I was feeling negative emotions, when what I really wanted to feel was total support and love, just like what so many of my friends feel when watching the show. Even worse, the shame prevented me from getting curious about these emotions that were coming to the surface. Since I now considered myself a part of the LGBTQ+ community, it was the emotion of anger against my own community that felt so shameful. Unfortunately, what I had not quite realized yet, was that I needed to observe the anger without judgment in order to learn from it.
What I needed was to practice self-awareness. In self-awareness, there is no judgment, no shame—just curiosity. Self-awareness finally allowed me to remove the blanket of shame and ask myself, “Elena Joy, how do you know that drag is a power move? You’ve never been to a drag show. You’ve never met a drag performer. Maybe more information is needed.” So I intentionally sought out drag experiences in order to more fully understand if the anger I felt was actually a part of me, or if it was a “Factory Setting” that I needed to reset. . So, I attended live drag shows. I cultivated friendships with drag queens. What I quickly realized is that no man dresses in drag in order to grab power, or money, or take anything away from women. It’s simply an expression of gender outside the binary, and an amazing celebration of queer joy.
With that exploration, my anger disappeared. But this realization could never have happened if I had stayed within my “Factory Setting”—if I had kept the blanket of shame over my head and allowed myself to view the situation only through the filter of compulsive heteronormativity.
I recently taught the pillar of self-awareness at a company training and afterwards, spoke with a woman leader (we’ll call her Joann) who wanted to work with me further through executive coaching. During our first session, she said that she was worried she was not as inclusive of a leader as she had once thought. She was accomplished in her industry, and proud of her 20-year long career. Her favorite part of her job was championing emerging women leaders, lifting them up alongside herself. But recently, she had realized that she needed to work more towards inclusive leadership.
During the previous three years, three of Joann’s staff members had embraced new gender identities. Their pronouns changed from she/her to they/them or he/him. People that Joann had hired as women were now stating that they were no longer identifying as women. Joann admitted to me that she tried to be respectful and supportive, but that her brain hadn’t really resolved this—as evidenced by the number of times she’d misgendered these employees. She’d recently lost a staff member that she truly valued, and this person had noted in their exit interview that they felt unsafe at work—with a boss who, after a year, still couldn’t use their correct pronouns.
Joann felt the sting of that loss. Yet, she was even more concerned about an inner bias, maybe even a prejudice, she wasn’t aware of that was affecting her career and her sense of self. For years she had prided herself on being a feminist—a champion of the gender minority, and an inclusive leader. If she wasn’t, then who was she?
We began working on general self-awareness, and with the help of the Light Meter and other exercises, Joann became more aware of her emotions and the situations that triggered them. Through our work together, Joann uncovered aspects of herself she had never before realized, and her sense of self (and her own gender) deepened.
In my work as an executive coach (note: I am not a licensed therapist), I never ask my clients about their pasts—but we did explore Joann’s current feelings about gender. She discovered that she really did view gender as a binary; men vs. women. And when she thought about it more through the lens of internalized homophobia/transphobia and compulsory heteronormativity, Joann realized what she had unknowingly felt was that her staff members had succumbed to the patriarchy by “turning their back” on the female gender. She had perceived that while she fought hard for years advocating for gender equity, these younger employees were so easily dismissing her hard work by not identifying as women.
Joann was angry. She hadn’t even realized the anger because it somehow felt shameful, and so she’d thrown a blanket over it in her mind and didn’t face it head on. Odds are, there are many of us that can identify with this conundrum. Only once Joann was able to voice what she was truly feeling, without judging herself, could she experience transformative growth.
I also know Joann loves to read. So as part of our work together I suggested Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, which explores the same themes with which Joann was wrestling. After reading the book, Joann decided she wanted to talk about what she had learned with someone who was non-binary, but also someone who did not work with her professionally. Joann’s 17-year-old daughter had several non-binary friends (whom Joann had previously assumed were girls). So, Joann ordered lots of pizza and soda, and spent an evening in her living room talking about gender identity with her daughter’s Gen Z friends. Her daughter expressed pride in having a mom who was eager to listen to her friends, and their unique experiences around gender identity.
Joann’s world grew exponentially during those three months working together. She delved deeper into what being a woman actually meant to her, personally and professionally, and how that impacted her role as an inclusive leader.
By practicing self-awareness, Joann became a better boss, a more inclusive leader, and deepened her relationship with her daughter. She developed authentic allyship skills, which had been the primary goal. She also relished in getting to know herself more fully and understanding her sense of womanhood more deeply, which resulted in a greater sense of self-love. Nothing is better than that.
Self-awareness allows you to see the filter apart from the photo—the blanket of judgment that lies on top of your reality. It allows you to remove the filter and see your reality clearly, without judgment, and to use curiosity in order to make necessary changes to your “Factory Setting”.
Self-Awareness is like an EASY button for allyship and inclusion—issues that often feel anything but easy. It allows us to take radical responsibility for our personal and organizational allyship, and move further into inclusive leadership because we’re not left tripping over our self-judgment.
The pillar of self-awareness is how we as individuals are able to embrace all of our identities and speak up for them proudly. It is how we become inclusive leaders for marginalized communities, and for ourselves.
Self-Awareness is one of the Four Pillars of Inclusive Leadership Skills that makes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives authentic, successful, and sustainable. Information regarding the trainings can be found here.