All the World’s a Stage… Trick or Treat!

Playing dress up is second nature for many of us. Girls are often told they have to play dress up to be in the game. My great-grandmother Grace had to dress up as a boy to participate in the town horse race. My abuela Ana dressed up as a boy to lead her Catholic school’s soccer/futbol team in Panama… that was years ago. Many successful women executives will tell you real life stories about how they still have to dress and act like men to be successful. I have been playing dress up for years. In high school I played dress up trying (and failing) to look like a popular, white girl. My hair will NEVER do the Farrah Fawcett wings. When I acted like my self and carried a brief case….people thought I was dressing up…I guess there was always a CEO somewhere inside that fuzzy-headed nerd.

I became a mother and finally, finally found a place I didn’t doubt myself. I didn’t abandon them to put my CEO hat on, I just grabbed the babies, put them in a pouch, and they became an integral part of my CEO uniform. I wasn’t playing dress up (’cause spit-up on a nice blouse is not fun! Managing board meetings and changing diapers (while morning sick) is not for the faint of heart!) It’s my job, my life and I get to define who I am. I refused to allow people around me to say my children had no place in my workplace. Notice the children in the company halloween shots above, they know they are part of the team! The other thing I see when I looked back at these photos (and saw my team all dressed up in costume on our Halloween call yesterday) is that I have created a culture where they ALL feel safe to do something dangerous. I mean seriously, when your CFO and entire finance and accounting team dress up as felons, and your corporate counsel puts her hair up in side buns as Princess Leah, and your CIO dresses up as Batwoman… that is feeling safe enough to do something dangerous! People yesterday brought their pets and their children onto the call! What a wonderful, and successful meeting where everyone felt safe enough to be silly! I was delighted by a hammerhead shark, an aged millennial and even had a magician perform a magic trick!I have a profound sense of admiration for the strong women on my team who dare to be silly because I know it takes extreme courage. They are pressured to put on manly looking clothes and scoffed at if their children (human or furry babies) make noise in the background or if their face shows emotion… but herein lies one of the many silver linings of 2020. Everyone has dogs and children in the background and what would have been abhorrent is now just another Zoom meeting. Emotional intelligence is becoming a cultural strength to highlight instead of dismissed as an overactive set of female hormones. One of my incredible managers even dressed up as her own raging hormones! What a fun, strong and powerful team I have. I am now 2 decades into my career and I am playing dress up in a whole new way. Since I was inspired by hubby/rockstar Paul, I jump up on stage, grab a guitar/ukulele, put on some fun boots and a cool leather jacket and pretend I know what I am doing while surrounded by musical talent. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that just like the nerd in middle school caring the brief-case…I am truly a life-long closet musician who was just waiting for the talent to come out. I may be playing dress up, but the audience is still singing along and dancing and having a great time. I was even told to clear the stage at the House of Blues in New Orleans by the manager. She mistook us for the “real” band scheduled later that night…Last year at one of our local shows the manager came out and paid me with a one hundred dollar bill and asked to book us monthly for the rest of the season… (I still have that bill). People in the audience who know our day jobs mistakenly thought we were dressing up to be musicians, they didn’t understand we are musicians who just dress up in our day job to pay our bills. We can all have different hats to wear or costumes we change… and they can all be authentic. So my message today is simple. Be silly, have fun, dare to do some thing dangerous and dress up as who you really are, and not how the world wants you to be. Encourage your children and teams to do the same. Don’t worry if the socks don’t match or if they wear the same hat or boots every day. Find the place where you don’t doubt yourself, anchor yourself there and then just see what happens! Just because my neighbor dressed up as a batman it didn’t really make him Bruce Wayne, so why should I judge my neighbors or facebook friends by their costumes of Elephant or Donkey over the next few days? Have fun! Be curious! … but most of all BE YOURSELF. ROCK ON!! and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!