Code Switching Is Not a Strategy. It Is a Tax.

Speaker A: I've been thinking a lot about politics and authenticity and corporate spaces. And all of this spring, I actually took a backseat for my podcast. And I took a backseat for my podcast at first because the hustle and the bustle and I was trying to just do so many new things this spring. I am the president of the pta. I also sit on a board. I had tons of team coaching, new, like, contracts and things that were coming up for me. And it was just a busy time of year. And I started to get inundated. And one thing that I'm starting to learn about myself is that when I have a lot of different frameworks and strategies and things, and I'm watching things on social media and how people are presenting themselves and content, all this stuff, it can get very overwhelming for me. And what I noticed is that, uh, a little piece of my authenticity started to go out the door. I started to perform in a way that I wasn't necessarily, uh, liking because it was exhausting me. It was making me burned out. It was making me feel like I'm trying so hard and not producing a lot of results. And so as I started to think more and more about it, I started to connect what was going on in society globally to the corporate workplace and to thinking about black women and even myself. And I wanted to, you know, talk about this because I think it's important that we really think about what the impact of not showing up, um, authentically actually cost us. And we're in the middle of, uh, voting season or election season in the United States, and there's a lot of different people that showing up on the screen. A lot of reality stars that are going for office and running as candidates. There's candidates that has to present in a certain way. And sometimes it doesn't feel like they're being themselves and they're not genuine, or they talk a good talk, and then when it's time to walk, they crawling. And so I'm just starting to notice a lot of these different things that are happening. And I started to say to myself, what truly is authenticity? Authenticity is related so much to trust. And we just have to be honest and tell ourselves and ask ourselves, am I showing up as the full version of myself when I walk into every room that I'm in, or am I sending my representative to run the show? Welcome back to Leadership beyond the Title. My name is Tichina Braxton, and this summer I am bringing back my podcast and doing something a little differently where I am, uh, bringing my series where we are Talking about leadership from every season of life. And this week we're going to be talking about authenticity, about code switching, about the characters we play in our workplace. Last week I was able to open up and I was able to talk about what this season looks like for me, about being present, about being focused, about really being in the moment with everything and taking everything in. And I talked about the data or the approach that I'm taking and what's forcing me to look in that direction. And for me, it's looking at the number of summers I have left. Not the number of summers I have left in my life, but the number of summers that I have left before my children turn 18. Already have two adults. They're 18. They're, you know, they're past 18. They're, they're on their way. They're becoming adults in their own right. But I have two younger sons who I'm able as an entrepreneur now. I'm able to attend the games, be the BTA president, sit on boards, things like that that I didn't get to do. And so this season of my life is reminding me how to show up and how to be present. So if you haven't listened to that episode or watched it on YouTube, go back to next last Wednesday and, uh, you could go and check it out. But today we are going to be talking about who do we show up as, who is our full person? And we go deeper on the why, we go deeper on the systems that actually make us feel like we have to be that way. So let's get into it. So before we start, I just want to name something very transparently. Code. Switching or showing up or bringing my representative into the room wasn't something that I accidentally stumbled upon. I actually chose that direction in my career very strategically. And you may say, like sending somebody else in there and trying to be somebody different. Tichina, you was being fake and ah, yeah, sorta. I sorta was kind of being fake. But I was being fake out of a need for survival, a need for safety, a need to advance in my career. And that totally got me in the space of exhaustion and burnout and questioning whether or not I truly was myself. And I have spent this last season or this last spring really thinking about my m own authenticity. I have seen so many content creators because that's the world that I'm living in now. I'm not necessarily employed by a 9 to 5. I work in, in those spaces all the time. I'm still walking the hallways in the rooms and sitting at the tables of corporate workspaces because I work with leaders and I work with teams. And so I'm still doing that. However, I'm not in those day to day type of environments. And so when I look at social media, which is the landscape that I play in now, I recognize that there's so many people out there who are truly trying to just make it. They are putting all their energy into following the trends, following what works, following what sticks. And sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. And sometimes when it works, it's not sustainable in the long run because it's not truly who we are because we're trying to be somebody different. And so I've been thinking a lot about this when I was thinking about the arc of my series and what I wanted to talk about and uh, what I wanted to show about leadership and how to navigate some of the challenges and how we show up in different capacities in different areas. And I just really want it to be like super clear that sometimes we choose the path that we're on purposefully. And it's because when we choose this path, we know that it's going to have hopefully a positive impact or a positive result. And one thing that has really been eye opening for me, and I would say the last two weeks, I had already kind of put, you know, my topics together and everything that I wanted to say on this podcast for the summer. And one of the things that has been eye opening recently was this new phenomenon of yapping on camera. I'll tell you, the first time that I heard the term yapping as like a new strategy was from Shannon McKinstry. Now, Shannon McKinstry is a phenomenal woman. I signed up and been in her program before and I think she's a lovely woman and she talks about yapping on camera. And if anybody has been following my journey on social media, you know, most of my content is talking to camera, because that's all yapping is, talking to camera. And I watched her go viral and I'm trying to, you know, imitate her strategies and how she presents and learn the hook format and the psychology and da, da, da, da, da da, like all of the things, right? And so just stay with me here because it's all. This all will make sense. And so I'm looking at her and I'm watching her go viral. Then most recently, uh, you all have probably heard of Jessie Jean and she just recently was on social media. She's only been on social media or she redid her page or came out in the last six months. And she's been experimenting with things. And as, uh, she's been experimenting within six months, she put up a course out there called yapping or yapping content. And then all of a sudden she blows up. Everybody's talking about her in her, in their content. And she made $1.2 million in a two week launch or something like that. And so it got me to thinking like we're all trying to mimic the, the greats, the success of many different people. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And what gets in the way and what I noticed, what got in the way for me in corporate spaces a lot of the times as I was growing and developing in my career, was that I was so busy trying to mimic others that I forgot who I was. And there's some other psychology behind Jessie Jean and what she's doing and some of the things that get in the way. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. But she's an example of Shannon McKinstry. She's an example of they showed up as their authentic self and it worked for them. And there are also downsides to showing up, uh, as yourself, as a black woman. And so as a black woman, sometimes we have to make the choice or we have to make the trade off of do I show up fully, 100% authentically who I am, or do I code switch based on the context and based on the rooms that I am in to seem more palpable to people that I'm around? And that's something that we have to think about. When I was growing in my career, I did that and I did that in a way for my safety and survival to the point where I gave it a name. And I talked about this on my sus tag last or two weeks ago. And I talked about it and I said, the thing about showing up in these spaces is I've started to tell myself before I walk in, I literally create my own mantra and my mindset. And I say, I'm about to walk in and I'mma put on my white girl. Yes, I'm going to put on my white girl. This was purposely done because I was watching white women move up the ranks in the hierarchy, grow into managers, become VPs, executives and things like that, which seem so gracefully and elegantly and without a lot of drama. And there was this assumption that they can do it and it will work for them. Whereas black women, we have to prove ourselves, we have to show that we can do it, we have to go above and beyond. We have to put in more hours. This is what I was seeing. And so I started to say, I'm going to mimic that thing in order to get the success that they have. But over time, just like I started to see in my content and in my ability to dick clients one on one, um, was that I was more exhausted and there was less reward for more work. And that's when I had to shut it down and I had to say, you know what? Let me go back to the drawing board of who I am, who I am inside, who I can be, and what feels most genuine and sustainable to me. And so this is what this, this episode is about. Because I want to dispel the myth that who we are is not enough. Even though the systems try to tell us that there's subtle kind uh, of messaging that happens through media and through different, you know, areas that tell us we don't belong, we are enough. And I have proof. I've seen it. I've had mentors that have walked that path. I've see people in political environments that walk that path. Even though there will be rooms that will get smaller because you are showing up, uh, fully who you are, there are going to be several other rooms that are going to get much bigger for you. And so, as we dive in, I want to start with the research and what the data says and what some things that I found across the Internet and in different articles, because I want you to know that this isn't something that it's all on you or you're by yourself. And this is actually something that is common, and it's common for black women. And I'm going to pull the thread when I talk about Shannon McKinstry or Jessie Jean. And I just wanted to, you know, really just make sure that you understand why, as successful as they are, it's feeling like a Sheryl Sandberg lean in moment. So let's go into some of the research and talk about what that looks like. So first, looking at some research, I want to start at with the American, uh, Association of University Women 2024 report. And this 2024 report says that women earn 81 cents to every male dollar when they work full time, even when they work full time. And so we've probably seen this in other lean in reports. McKinsey reports something like that. Um, it's 81 cents that they get. This is from 2024, and it drops down to 76 cents if you work part time. So that can't even give us the whole dollar, right? We talking about $1. They don't even want to give us a dollar. And so this is some of the messaging that is being sent to us that we aren't good enough. It's a signal to say, you may be doing the same work, but you aren't doing it at the capacity that a man can do it. You don't have the vision that a man has. You can't sustain and be sustainable long term like a man can. You can work all hours and do all the things because you're actually a woman who has a family that you take care of. So you can do that. And I'll talk about that more. But those are some of the subtle messaging that we get because we can't even get the whole dollar. We don't, we can't even match. It's not like the 401k where they match. We don't even, we aren't even allowed to match. Right? So society is telling us our worth just based on the way that they would like to pay us. And so that's indication number one on why sometimes even women will say, I need to be more masculine, I need to bring more masculine energy when I walk into a room. When studies actually say when women are leaders, when the feminine energy is in the room, there's actually better results. Okay, now, so let me keep going. Uh, and that's just the pay gap. That's just the pay gap that is being fed to us and shown to us. And this is one way that we are messaged that we are valuable enough. The second one is invisible labor. So the world inequality report of, uh, this year, 2026, it says women's labor is structurally undervalued globally. They don't even see our work and the things that we do as valuable. And we see that specifically in caregiving and domestic work. So if you are a babysitter, a nanny, maybe you're a house cleaner or something like that, most times it's not being counted. And when I read this, I was like, I, uh, totally get this. Because guess what? When I look at industry reports, labor reports, um, I was looking at an AI anthropic report this morning, and I'm looking at all these reports and I'm like, you know what? This is absolutely true. Because they don't even list that as part of the industry. They don't list that as like an industry career that people should aspire to. I remember being a little girl and my mom used to say they used to have home economics in school. They would have full kitchens that you can learn how to cook. They would have, like, different things like that. They don't have that in schools anymore. Why? Because they've said that that's undervalued. And then you come to 2026, where our government, made up of, uh, many men, are telling us that women need to go back in the home. They don't need to be out there making money. Right? And there's different reasons for why they're saying that, which is all rooted in bias and to keep women down. But one of the things that is telling us is that that is where we belong, because those are things you're just supposed to do. And we actually don't have to give you props for doing it. And so this report is saying literally that women's contributions are invisible. That's not something that needs to be put out on the screen and share with everyone. So you got the pay gap. That's the subtle message that's saying, you're not worth it. Then you have invisible labor that's saying, yeah, you're not worth it. So we keep like, these are things that's making us sad. We need to. We need to be this person. We need to show up this way. We need to be like them. We need to code switch. We need to be more masculine. We need to. All of these messages saying we can't be ourselves. The next thing is the leadership gap. So the UN Women Gender Snapshot of, um, 2025 studies 65 out of 70 countries. And in those 65 out of 70 countries, it says women are far likely to be teachers. Okay? So that's not a surprise. Women dominate the teaching industry. However, the sentence is not finished yet. Women are more likely to be teachers, but not principals. So a, uh, industry that is dominated by women, more teachers are women. There's less women principals. Okay? And this to me was like, oh, my God. Like, as I look around and I'm thinking about it, I'm like, you're absolutely correct. And it just gives me hope to be better. And it's one of the reasons why I sit on the boards of, um, the schools, because one, education is super important to me. I really, really, really value education. But two, I've been able to make recent impact where I was part of a principal search. And yes, we hired the woman. Now, in my mind at the time, it wasn't even about the woman or the man. However, as I think about it, I'm so glad that she showed up with the skills and the criteria and the Capabilities and the experience, the expertise and the potential that is necessary for the role. But more women should be granted the opportunity to fall into these principal positions. But because they don't, we send a message that women are not qualified, that we are evaluating them and not seeing their qualifications the same way. How is it that I can have all of this expertise as a teacher but not as a principal? Things that make you go m. Right. And so that's another way that, you know, our society is teaching us we can't be ourselves Now. Keep going. I'm going to keep going. Um, just a little bit more data, because I really want to paint the picture for you because I think sometimes we may, especially right now, there's a lot of opinions out there. There's a lot of opinions. And these opinions are getting us in trouble, which is why we have workplaces that are like, I have an opinion about this person. I don't think they're going to do a good job. Or, oh, I think that this person's better than the other person. Because my opinions. Instead of kind of looking at data sometimes, right? You want to take both. You want to do a both, and you don't want to take one completely. But sometimes the data is very helpful for us, especially as we're trying to shift our identity, shift our mindset, become better leaders, become more empathetic leaders. We want to sometimes look at the data because the data will help us in just much more, um, holistic way to help us move forward. Sometimes we need that. I know I need that for myself. Sometimes. I need to. I need to see that I'm not by myself, and I need to see that it's been studied, that someone's evaluating it, and that will help me to create the solutions or be part of the solution in the future, which was, you know, like the principal search. Now, when we look at, um, code switching, right? Because a lot of us are code switching, and sometimes we're thinking like, I'm not going to be fake. I'm 100% right. And I laugh because my husband's always. I'm a 100%. There's a lot of us that are on social media and we're talking, especially in the black community, like, I'm gonna keep it a hundred. I'm real. I'm gonna be authentic. I'm not trying to hide who I am. I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna do this. And then we get into a space and we're a completely different person. And you got your homegirl Looking at you like, who are you? But according to race equality matters, 70% of, uh, black women say they code switch or felt the need to code switch in their career. That means seven out of 10 black women are code switching. So if you have been in this and you've been doing this and you've been code switching, you're not code switching because necessarily you want to. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes it's out of survival. And I've, uh, said this already, even for myself, like it's out of survival sometimes that I needed to code switch early in my career, that I chose that that was the best thing to do, that I was going to put on my white girl and walk into the room and that was going to help me grow in my career until it didn't. So there are impacts though, when you show up in this way, there is going to be an impact. And one of those impacts is that there's elevated stress, there's more burnout, there's chronic inauthenticity, meaning you so fake you phony, like nobody can trust you. Nobody knows who's gonna walk in the room when you walk into the room. And so that is a deep seated problem when it starts becoming chronic. Now we're toxic. Now we're good for nothing. Now we cannot lead anything or anyone because this is not going to be fruitful in the long run. Now the body evidence in all of this, and this one is going to be the thing that's going to hit us the hardest. Because the, uh, American Journal of Public Health says that black women who navigate elevated racial stress show signs of accelerated biological aging. So it is stressful, it is racist on some levels that we have to walk into spaces and not be who we are. And what happens is that we age seven and a half years more. We are walking around 22 looking like we almost 30 years old because of the elevated stress, right? And I just used 22 and you know, 30 because that was easy for me to calculate in my head. But it could be 60 to whatever age to 70 something, or it could be 40 to 50 something, whatever that is. So it is literally telling us that we're aging faster when we can't be who we are, when we show up inauthentically. And I want to paint the picture for you. So we have these things called telomeres, I think is how you pronounce it in our DNA, and they're at the end of our DNA strands. And light tennis shoes, like the shoelaces, when the shoelaces get frazzled at the end, they kind of become good for nothing, right? You can't put it through the hole. You see, little kids have this when they're walking on their shoes, shoestrings all the time. That's what happens to the telomeres, the little fuzzy things at the end of our DNA. And over time, it becomes good for nothing. And we need our DNA for everything. And so this is when we aren't showing up authentic, when there's chronic inauthenticity, when we have to mask, when we have to code switch, when we have to do all of these things. This is what is happening in our, in our DNA. And so now we're aging faster. And that's not good because we keep saying black don't crack, but inside we're burning down. This is why we have higher rates of, of, uh, cancer and diabetes and heart disease and all of these different things, right, girl? Because you not being 100. So we want you to be 100%. We want you to show up and be who you are at all times. That is the goal. Now lastly, is the competence tax, like showing up and having to prove yourself. 67% of black women, according to Catalyst, says that they have to continuously validate and prove themselves all the time. 67%. But only 10% of white women have to do the same. Now you can imagine this is exactly why I said that when I was coming up in my career, I was like, I need to put on my white girl. Because they get to, uh, they know how to do it. They don't have to prove themselves. They don't have to do none of that. So I'm going to figure out how they gonna do, how they do it. I'm gonna figure it out. Because when we are energetically having to spend so much of our time establishing our right to be in the room, we do not move further, faster or at all sometimes. This is another reason why I see so many black women talk about imposter syndrome. And sometimes I'm like, girl, what are you talking about? Imposter. Imposter. What? Since when do you believe that you go to school, you get your credentials, you do all of this work, and you're going to walk in feeling like you're an imposter. You can only be an imposter if somebody told you you were an imposter. And if they told you you were an imposter, they treat you like an imposter. But this isn't a, uh, syndrome or, uh, you know, a disease. Or something that you created on your own, so it can't be anything other than the way society treats you. And so that's why I call it imposter treatment. Because my mindset won't let me to believe that I truly have something I need to fix within myself to become less of an imposter. Actually, let's fix the system that keeps on trying to tell me that I don't belong because they only want to pay me $0.81, or they don't want to see my role as a caregiver as valuable, or they keep having me prove myself over and over and over and over again. Or they keep telling me that I need to code switch in order to feel like I'm important. Or they tell me that, you know, I can only be a teacher and I can only go up to a certain level, but I can't be an executive. These are the things that get in our way and make us feel the way that we feel. And so we have to interrogate the system and stop trying to interrogate ourselves as the problem. I didn't mean to go on that tangent, but I have to say it, because black women, we are not imposters, and we shouldn't be feel that way at all. Okay? So I want you to know this is the research. This is some of the data. This is probably only the tip of the iceberg, but this is some of the data that I have found. And it didn't start at your job. It started sometimes the messages that you grew up on. Some of the messages were like, my mom told me, don't take your personal stuff to work. So, okay, don't show up, like, who you are. Don't. Don't let them people know who your family is. Don't let them people know what happened at your house last night. Matter of fact, if they ask you about your weekend, just tell them it was fine. Because the minute you tell them that your weekend was all of this and what you did, they gonna be looking at you like, ooh, that's what they do over the weekend. Don't tell me you've never heard that. Don't tell me. If you tell me you didn't, I'm gonna have to. I'm, um, gonna have to look at your black heart a little bit more deeply. However, I do wanna tell you, like, these are the things that are happening to us. It tells us so much about, like, our. Our life. Our life and the way we grew up. We did things because we needed to survive, not because, you know, it was something necessarily that we wanted to do. But, like my early career, I knew that I had to do something different in order to be accepted, in order to belong, until it didn't work anymore. And I also want to also just put this in here, is that when we are so busy trying to be like everybody else, we're actually contributing to white supremacy culture, which is something that we're trying so much, so hard to dismantle. And so I just want you to remember that, um, I won't go into that in this podcast episode, but I do want you to know that that contributes to that. Okay? So before I give you anything to do, I do want to say this. I don't want you to feel like you have to fix yourself. I said this, uh, before. Like, this is not an imposter moment. I don't want you to feel like because you had to code switch, that that makes you weak. It doesn't. Some. Some of us choose it strategically, right? And if we're going to choose it strategically, what I also want you to know is don't lose yourself in the process. The Bible says, what good does a man do to gain the world and lose his soul? And I don't want you to lose your soul in the process. When you start losing your soul, you start feeling very exhausted and burnt out. And that's when your telomeres start aging 7 1/2 years more. And now you walking around looking frayed, busted, and disgusted. And so I don't want you to feel that way either. Okay? Um, knowing which rooms is for you. How to keep your head on a swivel. How to be mindful of what's happening. That's important, and you should know that, and you should be aware of that. And you shouldn't have to be somebody other than who you are. Okay? So here are three things that you can start to do in order to try to dismantle and try to start to understand where you are. Because you have to become aware first before you can change and before you can shift. And maybe you started listening to this episode and you're like, that is not me. Like, Shashina, I am good. Like, I'm always keeping it real. And now you're like, huh, huh. Maybe there are some moments where I do show up differently. I do say, I'm, um, gonna put on, uh, my white girl, and I'm gonna do that thing. Right? Maybe there are some moments like that. So let's talk about some of the ways that you can start to become more aware so that you could do something different that's going to work for you in the long run. I would rather be. And I'll just say this really quick. I would rather be not making as much money as, uh, my heart desires. I do want to make more money, but I would rather. The trade off here is I would much rather be myself and be healthy than being dusted, disgusted, losing my soul, and making a million bucks. I'm sorry. Because it's not sustainable. You are ultimately gonna lose all the money because you can't keep up with a version of yourself that isn't true, that isn't real. Okay. Uh, but I'll just leave that right there for you to think about. All right, so first thing, you have to trace the belief. You have to interrogate your beliefs. You have to start to ask yourself, where did this thought of, uh, who I should be come from? And why is that better than the person that I am? Um, today? Your beliefs have a certain history and a certain experience that have popped up for you. And nine times out of 10, it was because there was a safety moment you want to start to think about what was that moment? What were the specific voices? What were the things my parents taught me? What. What were the things that I saw happen to somebody who dared say what was on their mind? What were the things? Go look for those things. Start to interrogate it. Start to ask yourself, okay, so that didn't work in that moment, was that more about that person or more about the other person making them feel that way? Um. Um, start to look at those. Because if we don't interrogate our beliefs, we walk around with a lot of beliefs that we don't even know where they came from. We don't know there's a story, and I'm probably going to butcher it, where there was a. In this story, I've heard many times where a, uh, woman was using, like, a roasting pod to put her turkey in or something like that. And she was using it, and over the years, she always used it. And somebody was like, why are you using that? And she was like, I don't know. That's what my grandmother did. And when she finally asked her grandmother, Grandma was like, well, I only use that because it was big enough to fit it in. Right? So they never knew why they were using that particular thing than maybe something else than a roasting pot. It's an example of looking at, uh, why do we have the beliefs that we have? And so you want to trace that first because you want to be able to figure out why, why you think the way you think. Now, after you do that, the second thing you want to do is you want to ask yourself, what does it cost to do this? What does it cost me? Does it cost me friends and family? Does it cost me sleep? Does it cost me money? Does it cost me my faith, my values? Does it cost? What does it cost? I think because every time you are playing somebody different, every time you're being inauthentic to yourself, it's going to cost you some level of energy. And that energy is going to be detrimental to your physical DNA, but also to the people around you. And you want to ask yourself, based on this belief, what is the action that I do? What, what am I, what action am I taking? And what does it cost me? And maybe that cost is good enough. You're like, I can manage that cost, right? But like any good investment, it compounds over time. So is your investment compounding in a negative or a positive way? That's the questions you want to ask yourself. And the third thing is, find a room where you can be real. Find your safe space. Find those areas where you don't have to be somebody else in order to. To be accepted, in order to belong, in order to fully show up as yourself. Um, many people may find this in their friend groups. Maybe it's between them and their best friend. Maybe it's their partner, Maybe it's even with their children. They're like, I could be myself with my kids. I don't care. My kids know what I do and who I am, and I'm good with that. Maybe it's a sorority or fraternity or, uh, you know, like a classroom. Maybe it's a specific team at work. Maybe it's an employee resource group. Find the room where you can be real, where you can practice showing up authentically without necessarily offending somebody or, you know, knowing how to navigate if someone does feel offended and how to walk through that. I want you to find those areas for yourself so that you can really say, oh, I can do this. I'm not going to die. I'm not going to go to jail. It's okay. And I can show up. You, uh, know, over time, I had to learn that. And I started to do little things, little by little, you know, to show up fully as who I was. Um, I didn't always start working in my career with these red braids. I would be there like, I can't stand down. I don't want to stand out. Right? I don't want to be out there. But you know what, as I think about it, where it started was lipstick. So I love lipsticks. I love purples and pinks and reds and things like that. I love lipstick. I don't have that on right now. And I remember the first time that I came to work and I was like, I'm wearing my bright pink lipstick and I can't remember the name of the lipstick, but it was from Mac. And people was like, oh, that's so cute. I love it. Then I start wearing red. Then I wear my, my, my purple, my heroin purple, um, from Mac. And I was just like, oh, this is it. Then I, you know, I got my red braids and I haven't went back since I got my red braids to the point where it became kind of my, um, my brand of my red braids. And you know, my mom, before she passed, she would tell me, sheena, that's your, that's your color. That's what you're supposed to do. So I continuously wear my red braids, um, and then my glasses and things like that, because these were parts of me that I wanted to bring out. But at first I was too scared, but I would do it little by little until it was like, that's Tichina. And guess what? She's still a badass. She's still smart. She still shows up in the room and she has all these skills and people listen to her and she can transform teams and she can do all of these things, even with the lipstick and the braids and all of that. Okay? And so find the roles that you can be real in. Find the areas where you can practice being yourself, because that's going to help you so, so, so, so, so much. Okay, so those are the three things that I would say for you to do. Trace the belief, interrogate it, think about what it costs, and then also find a room where you can be fully yourself and fully real. Before we move on, I want to take a moment to talk to you about my one on one coaching offer. So if you are resonating with this podcast and this topic so far today, this is the type of work that I do in my one on one coaching container. We talk about showing up, authentically showing up as a leader, even if you don't have a formal title. We talk about what it costs to perform, how to navigate systems that weren't built for you and to be successful. And we talk about the belief and the illusion under all of it. If this is something that you're like Tichina I definitely want to work with you. I definitely want to talk about what that looks like to be a part of your coaching container. Click the link in the show notes because you can set up a call with me right away. In this call, we'll have a conversation where we're going to talk about what's going on for you right now. How are you showing up? Where are you exhausted? Where have you tried to put on your white girl? And it is. It's not working. That is starting to stall out. The gas is running low. We'll talk about all of that, and we'll talk about what are some strategies that you can take forward to get through that. And then we'll talk about specifically how you can sign up to work with me one on one. I do this work all the time, whether it's one on one or with teams. When you work with me, I truly believe you don't have to be like anybody else but yourself in order to be successful in your career. So if this is you, click the link in the show notes and I can't wait to talk to you. So every piece of research that I have shared with you today is looking at this from a different angle. Black women are exhausted. Black women are not moving up the way that they want to in their, in their careers. And black women have far too long been walking into spaces, into rooms where they felt like they had to be somebody than who they were. And none of this has to do with your actual ability, your intelligence, your potential, your capabilities. It has nothing to do with that. It's just that the system has told us that we had to perform, that we had to be something other than who we are. A mask had to come on in order for us to be taken seriously. And that's not a reflection of your value. The system was broken way long before you even walked into the door, Way long before you considered to even having a seat at the table. But I guarantee that when you figure out how to do becomes so much easier, not just for yourself, but everyone after you. I remember having a mentor, and she to this day was so bomb. Like, she showed up as herself. She didn't make apologies for it. And as she continued to do that and people got to know exactly who she was and who she is, people started to respect that. And guess what? She is at the top of the food chain. I would say she is an executive. She's, uh, at the highest level and she's doing her thing just as herself. She rocks her natural hair. She says what she needs to say. And people accept it because let me tell you, when you are walking around as a representative of yourself, people don't trust you. The teams that you lead aren't as effective. People question your motives and you don't want that. If you really want to be successful, people have to trust you. And the way to, to garner trust from anyone is to show them who you are. And so you don't need to build a new character. You don't, you, you don't need to be someone else. Trust the person that you are. Trust you as the person with the experience and the expertise and you know the, the qualifications that is going to be able to get you to where you want to go. The research on high performing leaders is always consistent. The ones who show up as themselves, the ones who are not trying to front or fake or be phony, those are the ones that actually have the most effective teams and those are the ones who move further fasted. So here's a question that I have for you and I want you to sit with this this week and just sit with this. I want you to ask yourself, where did you first learn that you needed to be someone else? That you couldn't be authentic? I learned it at home. I learned it when I was told that I need to straighten up and I need to not tell people about my weekend or uh, not tell people who I am when I walked into a room. I learned it in the media. And I didn't even talk about the media today, but I learned what the media told me about who I am, about not seeing myself on screens, about not seeing myself go up to higher rank. That's what told me. And in my latest Substack article, I talked about the concrete ceiling. And I want you to know sometimes we are putting more cement on that concrete ceiling than was already there. Because we're trying to show up as somebody differently. We're erasing ourselves. We're not showing that. We're going to make you make space for my value when we try to become somebody else. And I honestly, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of following this other culture, that other culture, this boss or uh, that boss. I want to be myself. I can read all the books and I can get all the data. But my art, the way that I do it, my science of bringing it into the space is mine alone. And the world deserves that of you, of me, and every other woman, black woman, woman of color out there. And so it's important that we do that and not shy away from it. Okay, so what was the moment? What was the voice? What was the situation where you can say, this is where it all begins. Sit with that. You don't have to share with anybody else. This is for yours and for your awareness only. And hopefully this will make room for you to start to make some changes to some shifts in your life. You don't have to perform, so stop performing. This isn't a show. This is not a circus. This is not a Broadway show. You can be who you are. And if this episode resonated with you, please share with more people so that they can hear it. Leave a comment. This helps others find my show. And if you want to catch up with me, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm now on Substack. I am sharing this on Substack as well. I write, uh, a Sunday article every week on research and trends that I'm seeing out there in the world that could be helpful for you in your career. It's for me to like, nerd out, geek out and talk about the research and all the things that are happening. And so if you want to see me on such, that's where you can see that there. Episode three is coming out next Wednesday. So in that episode, I'm going to talk about my journey from administrative assistant to a coach. Now, you've probably heard pieces of that story. Next week I'm going to go a little bit deeper. It's going to be other things that I want to share around that because I want you to see the different ways that leadership is forming. How leadership is formed, how it formed in me, how it forms in others, how it takes shape in society. Because believe it or not, even if we're going off the deep end, that's the leader that we're shaping ourselves to be. Whether or not it's impactful, negatively or positive is up to the people who you are going to be serving. Hopefully it's the positive way. Okay, so thank you for being here. Thank you for coming back to my series this summer. It's just getting glitter and giggle. I don't even know if that's a word. But it's getting better and better. So I'll see you next Wednesday. Talk to you soon. Bye.