So I am Emma Cowling. I'm a leadership coach and I work with women in tech um who are leaders or aspiring leaders who want to be more visible and who want to be authentic.They want to find their, their resilience and I tend to work with them over a series of sessions to help them to explore what that means to them. Um My background originally, I was a software engineer. That's what I started out as and I was really very much one of the lads. So I was a um I drank beer. I played football. I kind of hung out with all the lads. My best friends were boys. Um And that's where as I started work as I went into work. And that really felt right. It felt like that's who I was. I, I enjoyed working in tech because of the male dominated environment. Um But I quite quickly started to move up the management chain. And what happened was that I found myself being um fitting in more and more to a mold which I thought people wanted me to be in, in order to be successful. So I had to hide my emotional side. I had to be more logical. I had to be more assertive.

I had, there are all these things that I had to learn how to do that weren't quite me and I found myself suppressing more and more the things that, that were, um, that, that were me, the, the girls that I had, I think for the first kind of three or four years of my career, I didn't wear makeup because I didn't feel like I should because guys didn't wear makeup.

I, I tried to wear trouser suits and stuff like that. I didn't want to wear a skirt because I thought I couldn't be girly. And there's a period where I, I became more and more sort of moving up into management, getting the recognition, moving into a leadership role. And I found myself being more and more of a people pleaser and that started to burn me out and that started to be very challenging for me and I, but I didn't know that that's what was going on. I didn't know that it was the reason for that was because I was hiding who I was and some of these other parts of me and it was through some coaching that I discovered that actually there was another part of me that that was there that was wanting to come through. And it was when I started being in that place and started speaking out and letting myself out, being a bit more girly being a bit more me. So suddenly I started to have more impact. Suddenly people started to listen to me in a different way. My career started to flourish but not in the kind of moving up the management chain more in the kind of I was doing more of what I wanted to do and I was connecting with people that I wanted to work with and then suddenly we were achieving more together. So that's really kind of my background and how I started to discover authenticity. And then moving on, I, I've always kind of been interested in personal development and in my leadership role, I was coaching people and learning to be a coach.

Two years, I took the lead to, to go self employed and become a coach and I kind of stepped back and went, went well. What is it that I want to work with? Who do I want to work with? Because I had lots of options and the thing that came through was well, actually in tech, we are encouraging women, more and more women to come into tech. And um we're encouraging girls to come through. But the role models that uh we're showing are those role models who are, um and the, the, the women that are moving into leadership roles are the ones who are being more male, the ones that are, who are following the system and, and working the system and sh but showing themselves up as being a male persona.

And it, and it mainly question is that, are they the role models that we want, is that what we want? And so, and I started to sort of think about, well, if we had more female voices in there speaking out authentically, how would the world of tech change? How would it be different? How would the iphone have been developed if it had been developed by a group of predominantly uh female voices rather than male voices, what would the features be different? How would it be, it would be different and, and that just got me interested and made me start to think, well, I would love to be the one or one of the people helping inspire more women in tech to be themselves and to speak out and have their voice heard. And so that's what I now do. So behind all that, it's about authenticity and that's why, that's why I'm here today to talk to you about authenticity. Now, the format of my talk, as you might have already guessed, I am not going to be doing um a presentation. I've not got slides, I'm just gonna hear so you can see me, you can see the whites of my eyes. Um because I think that's quite important in how I, how I share my message. Um And I would love for this to be interactive. I'd love to hear kind of from you what you're getting from it. Number one, because I want to know that, that your understanding. And if, if, if there's something that I'm talking about that doesn't click with you, I want to hear about it, ask the questions.

But number two, also by you reflecting and you kind of typing in the comments and saying, oh, this is what I'm understanding from it that gets means that it gets into your body more, it means you understand more. So hopefully you'll go away with more from this talk as well. So please do share what comes up for you. And, and so the first question I've got, well, I've already asked you one question, but the second question, maybe second question I've got for you is, is um what does it mean to be authentic? So what does it mean to you to be authentic? I sort of said this at the beginning, but we all have different definitions of authenticity. And so I'd really just encourage you to just type in the comments. What does authenticity mean to you? Um Just let I'll give it a little bit of moment to, to come through there. Um How do you know when you're being authentic? So, so I, I just to share for me, one of the things that for me, authenticity is showing up as me showing up and speaking out about who what it is that I believe in and being willing to say no, I don't agree with that.

This is what I think it might also be about sharing my ideas and telling people about what it is that the, the new idea I've had, even though I think that they might not agree with me, it's about that vulnerability that comes up when we show up and, and speak out and, and who knows what might come back.

But it's about our truth and speaking our truth. So I've got a couple of comments coming through here. So sura speaking my mind without being judged. Um And, and I'm, I'm gonna just challenge that a little bit and say, actually, maybe it's speaking your mind without fear of being judged because people will always judge you and we're going to come to that in a moment, people will always have some judgment about you. But if you can speak your mind without fear of being judged, then that, that for me is, is the showing up authentically. Um Sally feeling comfortable, happy and confident. Um and Jana feeling free to be yourself and to feel what you feel, say what you want to say. Um And, and without hurting someone's feelings, yeah, being able to disagree with someone without feeling like you're, you're putting them off. Um without, without you kind of dismissing them. So respectfully disagreeing with someone is part of that authenticity. I think it's being able to show up and know they can have a different opinion. I'm not gonna force my opinion on them. But this is my opinion and let's have a discussion about it. Um, you know, uh, behavior causing to your values, what's important to you and don't worry about what others might think. Absolutely.

And some of the work I do with my clients is about tuning into what those values are and what's, what's important to them so we can show up once we do that, it's much easier to show up as we are when we know what that is. Um Nicole says, staying close to myself and what I say and do. Yeah. And, and Monica, when presenting myself, I feel at ease with how I feel and who I am and, and that's, that's something I want to come on to as well in a minute. Just, just what is it that, that um when we show up with authenticity, the ease that's there being confident in ourselves being true to ourselves that sort of naturally starts to flow through us. And we, once we start showing up more authentically, more stuff comes through. So, so let me just so the, the, the thing that I then ask is, well, so authenticity is great and it's a great way to, to connect with other people. When we show up authentically, people connect with us better. They see us and they, they resonate with us. They, they understand us. Someone said uh A DB integrity is in there mentioning integrity and authenticity integrity, honesty. They all breed trust and they breed respect and having respectful relationships in a work environment that's so important. But if, and if we don't show up authentically, um, that's when people question us. So I don't know if you've ever noticed this but sometimes, um, we might meet someone and they are just a little bit. We're not sure what's going on for them.

We're not sure we can feel that they're hiding something. There's just that we get a feeling that something's not quite right. And when that happens, um we don't build, we don't reach out as much. We don't build the same sort of relationships. And so, so authenticity kind of is a way of, of building that trust and building a relation, relationships that can really kind of develop and grow. But the question I have then is that, well, what stops you? So I'd love to hear again in the comments. What stops you from being authentic? Um What is it that, that why, why do we not do this more if it's such a great way to connect with people? Um And, and, and yeah, so I'm just gonna pick up on and Neha's thing, learning to disagree with authenticity is something which is quite challenging, learning to disagree and, and, and have that discussion, especially when something when we're being sort of speaking out about something that's so true and important to us, we want the other person to take on our opinion, but sometimes it's just seeing that actually that's ok for them to have their opinion.

Um, so, but so if we speak out, we might kind of offend them in some way. But it's not about that. It's about having a discussion, opening the discussion and seeing that, that we all have that it's valuable for us all to have different opinions. Um, Jan says, fear of judgment and h hurting someone's feelings. Yeah, that's why we might not show up and, and fear of judgment is one that comes to me most often. So fear of what might someone might say if I say the wrong thing or if I get it wrong or if II, I hurt someone, if we stand out from the norm, Sally's just said we're trained to fit into the norm. We don't change who we are. Um We, we don't fit in. So we need to, we need to fit in and, and sta standing out is something that is scary because it's, we, we're trained to be part of the herd. It's a natural human instinct that if we, if we are different from everyone else, then we will stand out and we'll get taken out by the tiger, won't we? So, so it's that fear of standing out means that we, we tend to not do it, but actually change comes through us standing out and speaking out and, and challenging some of those opinions that are out there.

So that's why um I, I really love to explore this topic. Um And, and this, um the, the, the, the bit that really underpins this for all of me is that there's an element of fear and insecurity that stops us from being authentic. It's an, it's a real angle of we are feeling like if I do this then um I'm scared of what might happen. I'm scared that someone might judge me. I'm scared that there might be some implications. I'm scared and this is the, the one that I quite often share is that if I do this, then people might judge me and it might look wrong and then, um, I might lose my job and then I might, um, kind of never be able to get another job and then I might end up homeless and then I might end up on the streets and, and it's like there's this kind of very quick succession of going and going if I make a mistake or get it wrong or someone judges me too.

I'm going to be homeless. And of course, as I say that, that sounds ridiculous. But how often have you kind of gone? Oh my God, I'm gonna make, if I make a mistake, then it's all gonna go horribly wrong and catastrophizing. Yeah. Thanks Nadia. That's, that's absolutely. And we do it, don't we? We kind of, we quickly relate one little mistake to the whole of our lives. Disappearing, but that's not what happens. So I'm just gonna share with you, I'm conscious of time. I'm gonna share with you a couple of ideas that I, um, work with my clients around, uh, um, which, um, really help and have helped me as well. That's the important thing that I'm coming from a place of, I've explored these and they've really helped me and now I work with my clients on them and it's helped them to show up and, and just let go of some of these fears of being authentic and what might happen and fears of being visible.

Um I'm also gonna quickly say that um of course, it's only 20 minutes. I can't cover everything in this if you want to know more, do link with me on linkedin. I'm always open to new connections. And I also have a Facebook group called Authentic Tech Leaders, which you can find in the um on the web link um where I share a lot of um information and explore this from multiple perspectives. So please do come and join me. Um So, so what are the two comments? So two ideas that, that um I wanna share around authenticity. The first one is state of mind. So, so I can't remember who it was. Someone earlier on said, um I think it was. Janice said, sometimes I feel like I can be authentic and sometimes I, I'm not, sometimes my authenticity varies depending on how I feel during the day. And that authenticity, that, that variation is something that I'd really encourage you to notice. Now, what tends to happen is that when we are feeling good, when we're feeling in a great state of mind, we feel like we can take on the world, we feel like we can get out there and we can beat us, we can kind of really take things on. I don't know if you've ever sort of had a day where you've shown up and you have, um, there's, there's kind of hundreds of meetings in the diary room and there's all these people that you've gotta talk to and there's all these things you're going to do and you've just got on with it and it's just all flowed and it's all worked out and it's all falling into place.

And then another day you might find that you show up and you've got exactly the same number of things in the diary, same sort of things happening and you just feel like you wanna crawl back into bed. Now, the, the outside situation in that those, in those two cases, the actual what's going on is exactly the same and the difference is our state of mind. The difference is how we're thinking about that situation. It might be that we're feeling a bit tired, it might be feeling that we're feeling overwhelmed and so things look differently to us or it might be that we just had a boost and, and so we're ready to go out and take it on. And that fluctuation, that variance in state of mind from low to, to, to, to high is something that really happens naturally. It's something which evolves as we go along and, and what I'd really love to encourage you to, to, just to notice is the fact that, that we go as humans, we go in and out of a low, in a high state of mind all the time. And when we're in a low state of mind, we are less likely, we're more fearful. So we're less likely to be authentic when we're in a high state of mind. We're clear, we're calm, we're, we're ready to get out there.

We're resilient, we're feeling resourceful, we're feeling creative and we're much more likely to be authentic. So, authenticity fluctuates. Now, a lot of, um, positive self help stuff revolves around how do we get ourselves from being in the low state of mind? Less and in the high state of mind more. Now what I do. Um, and, and I don't think that this is the, the right way of doing this. We, we kind of cos when we start to focus on the fact that we're in a low state of mind and we need to get out of it. We need to change our thinking. We need to change the way we're looking at things that tends to put pressure on us, which is also part of low state of mind. Thinking what I tend to work around is instead of doing that, it's just noticing that you're not gonna be there forever, you're not gonna be in this low state of mind forever. Notice that throughout your life, your state of mind has fluctuated up and down. Notice that every human that is out there is, is their state of mind is fluctuating as well. They are going from lows to highs and notice that that whenever you get in a low place, something will happen that takes you into the next, eventually the thinking will change.

It might be, I mean, the, the, the, the obvious one is when you're out there, you're feeling overwhelmed, you're feeling struggling and then someone comes in and, and gives you a reward or they, they kind of um, something happens that just, it, it, it makes you feel excited and then suddenly things have changed, the thinking has changed completely.

You the way you see life changes and that's, that can happen. But at the same time, sometimes what we just need to do is go to bed and get some sleep and then we wake up the next morning and things look different. Sometimes it's just like it's, it's about giving yourself a bit of time on the sofa to watch Netflix. And just to know that give yourself permission to be in a low place not to wallow not to worry about how you're getting, getting out of it just to allow yourself to be there and, and be more stable and, and just, just know that it will pass, you're not gonna stay there forever.

And so that's, this is such a powerful way of living life and it's what I do. You will find me on the sofa, kind of just vegging out sometimes feeling sometimes like I really need to get on with stuff. I, I hadn't planned for this, but actually I know that now that I'm not gonna be effective when I'm feeling like that I'm just gonna go and hide for a bit and that's ok. And because I give myself permission to do that, I come out of it a lot faster. And so instead of kind of trying to deal with the low state of mind, what happens is I find myself much more in the high state of mind because I just don't respect the low state of mind thinking as much. So, so I hope this is making some sense. I'm seeing some comments saying, yeah, this is, this is making sense and, and it, but it, and, and I just encourage you to get out there and try it because while it can, I can teach you and, and share this stuff with you, the way it's gonna start working is when you see it.

So I'd really, this is my number one thing to take away from, this is just go and play with it conscious of time. But the other thing that I wanted to just add into this is the other thing that happens when we're feeling fearful is we create imaginary futures. So if we're scared of being authentic, and I've already mentioned this a little bit. We, we build up all these, this amazing imaginary scenario when, um, the catastrophe that's going to happen as a result. The thing to notice is that when we're thinking about the future, we can get fearful when we're thinking about the past, the past, we can feel fearful. But when we're in the present, when we are looking at what's going on for us right now, it's not possible to be fearful when we're just dealing in getting on with, dealing with what's happening right now. We can, we actually can just deal with that and we are amazing at dealing with that even in the biggest situations. So great example, the pandemic hitting us if we had been preparing for, um, the pandemic happening, um, in the year running up to it, if we knew it was gonna come and we knew we'd be locked down for a year, we would have put all sorts of measures in place and we would have got so scared about all the things that might happen.

But actually, we couldn't prepare and, and, and we didn't, and ok, we suffered a bit as a result, but we also got off and go, got on with it and, and have done some amazing things. Vaccines have been developed in a ridiculous amount of time that just probably wouldn't have happened if we'd anticipated it. So there's all sorts of things that we are very good at doing when we're dealing with the challenge in the moment. And so noticing this resilience that we have, noticing how strong that is, that really helps us to, to just, um, deal again with that fearful thinking instead of kind of worrying about, I need to prepare for if this might happen, this imaginary future, bringing yourself back into the moment and saying, what can I do with right now?

That's, that's the power, that's where the power comes. So come to the end of my time, I'm going to stick around for a little while for as long as I'm reliable for another 10 minutes or so. But just to summarize my top takeaways from this, um, notice your state of mind and how it fluctuates and notice how that impacts your authenticity. You're not aiming to be authentic all of the time. Um, you, you, your authenticity will fluctuate and give yourself permission to do that.

And when you do start to feel like you're in a fearful place, just bring yourself back to the moment, bring yourself back to now and stick with the, um, the, what can I if in this moment, what could I do? Which is authentic to me. And if that authenticity to you is just to go and hide, that's fine. If, know that in a moment you might change your mind and you might shift and decide, oh, hang on. I'm going to go and show up over here. Instead I'm going to go and speak out about that. Just get much more used to being in the moment and worrying less about where you're going.