Shawna Samuel
Hey, offloaders. It's Menopause Awareness Month this month, and whether or not you have experienced symptoms of menopause, you will get so much out of this episode if you are going through menopause, if you will be going through it, or even if you lead others who are going through it. So join me today as we talk about leading while perimenopausal and menopausal.

Intro
Welcome to the Mental Offload podcast, where we talk about women balancing work and life. It's the podcast that combines leadership, feminism, and coaching tools so you can tackle it all with more confidence and less stress. Here's your host, Ivy League mba, certified feminist coach and corporate warrior, Shawna Samuel.

Shawna Samuel
So this month, October, is Menopause Awareness Month. It's also the month of Halloween, which is one of my favorite holidays, I have to say, but it's also part of my family mission. I have to say, here in Paris, Halloween is not really a thing. And so one of the things that I do to help share a little bit of my culture with my kids is I tend to go all out on Halloween. So I have to tell you, I ordered this Halloween set of decorations, and when I opened it up, there was a banner in there. So I was really excited. I was gonna hang up the Happy Halloween banner on the wall, and then I realized that there was no thread holding this banner together. They had just sent me the letters of the banner. And you're going to think I'm making this up, but I am not kidding.

They sent me a needle and thread to put together my own Happy Halloween banner. I was like, clearly, whoever designed this was not a working parent. Because as you can imagine, the last thing kids want when they're tearing open new decorations is for you to have to sit down with a needle and thread and put your own banner together. And who has time for that? So I hope your Halloween is off to a better start than mine. But let's talk about menopause and perimenopause, because it is awareness month. You know, a few years ago, I did a podcast on the topic of dealing with perimenopause at work with the wonderful Michelle Kapler. She's an expert on menopause and women's health and how menopause can impact us. And I really focused in on how menopause impacts us as leaders. I remember back when I was growing up, menopause used to be referred to, in quote, unquote, polite company, as the change, right? And our bodies and our hormones are going through some serious change during this time. It's not just about stopping menstruation.

Menopause really comes with some real physical symptoms as well, like hot flashes, headaches, insomnia, or sometimes disrupted sleep if you're waking up in the middle of the night. Night sweats, even mood changes like irritability can come with menopause. And as more money flows towards research in this area of women's health. Much needed, by the way. We now know that women don't just start experiencing these symptoms at menopause. It often begins with perimenopause, which is that period, no pun intended, before your body says, okay, enough's enough, and you stop menstruating. There's a period of time where your body is kind of gearing up for menopause, and perimenopause can last four years. And so, as heartened as I am by the research and the attention that's being given to this issue, one thing I've noticed is that when it comes to menopause in the workplace, you know, it was and still is often talked about in the same kind of hushed, embarrassed tones that people use to talk about the change. Right. It's swept under the rug with a, you know, kind of, oh, well, maybe we should keep the thermostats lower or something.

I think it's so important to open up this conversation around menopause at work, because menopause and perimenopause do have real impacts on people who menstruate, whether as leaders or as employees. And those impacts, in my experience, go well beyond the sort of surface level, well, let's just keep the temperature cooler kind of stuff that gets talked about. So today I want to talk about some of the really tactical things that you can do to better lead through menopause at work, but also some of the impacts that are further reaching, whether that's on executive presence or right down to some of the core elements of our identities as leaders. Let's start with the tactical, and we'll work out to the bigger impacts. You know, if you're experiencing symptoms of menopause at work, what do you do? Oh, and side note, I'm just going to say menopause from here on out, rather than perimenopause and menopause. Just know I'm referring to both as a sort of shorthand. But if you look at some of the principal symptoms of menopause, there's fatigue, which can make meetings more taxing or sometimes even lead us to make unintended mistakes.

There's stuff like brain fog people sometimes talk about, like pregnancy, brain and that same experience of brain fog can come back in perimenopause and menopause. It can make you more likely to forget things that you used to be able to keep in your head. This certainly happened to me at points. I was like, oh, I think I need to start writing this down now. There's also stuff like irritability. It may make it much more difficult not to react to a frustrating situation or colleague in the workplace. So what can you do if you're experiencing this? I'm going to give you three things to think about. First and foremost is assessing your organizational culture and your own direct boss. I've seen some organizations in the uk, for example, are speaking much more openly about the impacts of menopause at work. They're training leaders in symptoms. They're equipping them to have conversations and thinking about workplace accommodations that make sense.

So if you're working in an organization with that culture, you might find yourself very supported and choose to disclose what you're going through. Not to excuse anything that's going on, but really to find solutions and accommodations together with your workplace. And let me tell you, I wish that every organization would follow this model and this best practice, because I think it's so essential not just for us to have support, but really to feel that sense of belonging and not being alone in something that probably most women who menstruate will experience to some degree. But if your organization is less supportive, I think the second thing that you can do is really seek outside support. Get support so that you're not going it alone and you have a space to discuss, to problem solve, and ultimately think about solutions that can help you show up as you're best at work.

The third thing that I have on my list is what I call a preparedness protocol. You may have heard me speak about this in other episodes, but the idea of a preparedness protocol is pretty simple. If you can anticipate that something might happen to you in a workplace context is really just planning out how will you respond if that happens. So let's say you experience hot flashes regularly. So, okay, if I experience a hot flash during this presentation, here's what I plan to do. I First, I'm going to wear layers, and that way I can take off my jacket if I am feeling too hot. I'm also going to keep a glass of cold water near me on the table to help regulate my core temperature if needed. Third, maybe I'll keep a small handheld fan in my bag so that I can give myself some ventilation if needed. So this is just an example. Your preparedness protocol is going to be what works for you based on your specific symptoms.

But when you plan for it, then you don't have to worry in the moment about, what do I do now? You're prepared, you know your steps, you have a plan. Having that kind of tactical approach is really helpful in minimizing the impacts to your executive presence. Know if you don't have a preparedness protocol. Well, you know, this happened to me. I had a hot flash in a meeting and now not only am I navigating, being physically uncomfortable, but I had all this mental chatter like, oh, can they see my face flushing? Oh, are they going to think I don't know my stuff? Maybe they'll think that's why, like, I'm getting a little bit red and now I'm acting flustered, I'm losing my train of thought, even though I know my stuff really well, it's because of the chatter that was going on in my head, not how well I knew the subject.

So these symptoms can have a real impact on your executive presence if you start to feel out of control of your, your body or your brain. Executive presence has a couple of different components, but two really important ones are gravitas. Do you appear to know what you're talking about? And appearance. Do you look like someone who is credible and trustworthy? And unfortunately, the symptoms of menopause can play on both of these things in terms of executive presence, especially when they get in our heads and then you start to feel out of control. They can also kind of show up when, say, big feelings or fatigue and irritability. They can cause you to be short with colleagues or lead to conflict, or sometimes they can lead to questioning your own competence. It's not a recipe for confidence. When you're dealing with these symptoms unchecked, it can start to knock you off your game and undermine how you present if you seem less sure of yourself.

And ultimately, in the worst case, it can even impact your career trajectory if you're trying to muddle through it. And I don't say that to be fear mongering. I say this as a sort of indictment of the conversation or lack of conversation that goes on around menopause at work. Right, because we treat it as if it's just some inconvenient physical symptoms that make us uncomfortable for a few moments and are just kind of a personal thing that we need to deal with. But when those symptoms impact the way that we're projecting outwards in terms of our executive presence, then it does start to have an even bigger impact. And I think we as women need permission to see those impacts and treat our symptoms seriously. It's not just a matter of personal comfort or convenience. Right? So if you are experiencing symptoms of menopause, give yourself that permission to take those symptoms seriously, to address the tactical impacts, but also get the support that you need to work through these. Now, I almost hate to say it, but that's not even necessarily the worst of the impacts of menopause on women as leaders at work.

Gosh, this is shaping up to be a really chipper episode. But as I said before, I think this is a really important conversation that we need to be having more of. And the reality is that menopause can do a number on your identity. You know, there's this strange intersection that happens around the time of paramountopause in our lives. Like in corporate life, your level of experience typically helps you command power and respect. You know, you start off at the entry level, and as you gain experience and master your craft over time, you keep accruing knowledge and power. And in the typical corporate trajectory, your skills and your value keep rising until around retirement age, at least if you're a man. Now, a caveat here. I'm generalizing a little bit. You may have worked with some colleagues who didn't have this experience of steadily rising value.

Sometimes health challenges or even just the appearance of frailty as men age can impact their ability to command power before they hit retirement age. And sometimes their personal choice is made as well to be like, you know what, I don't necessarily want to work full out until I'm, say, 65. And so people might choose to take a step back. But I'm talking here about considering both the average experience for men as well as the cultural stories that we tell. And by that measure, professional value looks pretty, pretty much like a largely linear rise from your entry level years to where you kind of top out at retirement age. Now, I have lots of thoughts on the wisdom of this way of thinking, but I want to stay on point here. So, you know, kind of think of it as that sort of linear rise where you're gaining in power, at least if you're a man, until you top out at retirement. But for women, there's this tension as we hit menopause. We're often at the peak of our professional powers. Up until that point, we have experience, we've honed our skills and our craft. We've got A network built over decades. And yet for women, our societal value takes a huge knock, right at this point. Think about what many cultures value and elevate in women. Youth, sexual attractiveness, conventional standards of beauty. I'm thinking about a woman in my network. Smart, successful, very conventionally attractive. You know, tall, thin, white, blonde, conventional good looks.

Now, she was also a powerhouse leader. She had an MBA from like the top business school. Brilliant, strategic thinker, really quick on her feet. But as she hit her mid- 40s, she started to sense that she was losing some of her influence. Like her input wasn't necessarily as sought out as it had been before. She found herself getting cut off more frequently in meetings and not being invited out to as many lunches amongst the executive crew. And it really started to mess with her. Like, was she hitting a glass ceiling, being marginalized by a rival? She wasn't feeling animosity from others, just a weird sense of invisibility. Suddenly she started questioning her own competence and frankly, her identity. All along her career. Up until then, she thought that she had been valued by her colleagues and her bosses for her. Smart takes clear competence, ability to get shit done. But with some of what got her into these powerful rooms, her looks. You know, that sort of trope about the older guys who want to be surrounded by hot, attractive women. Now, did her looks in her youth afford her some privilege? Certainly everything we know about privilege suggests that that's the case.

But I don't think we take anything away from her and her brilliance by pointing that out. I happen to think she was an exceptional woman and leader who would have been very successful regardless. But that doesn't really matter because she was being picked apart from the inside, that, you know, self critical inner judge. And now she was off her game. It was starting to show on the outside too, in her confidence, in the way she showed up in meetings, in how others perceived her. It was a total mindfuck. You know, your value in many societies for women starts off high and then declines. As maddening as it is, I think there was a pretty hilarious take on this, satirized really brilliantly in a sketch with Amy Schumer and Tina Fey and Julia Louis Dreyfus where a quote unquote aging actress is welcomed to a fete to celebrate her last fuckable day. It's hilarious and incredibly frustrating and validating at the same time because it kind of says the quiet part out loud. It's that sort of perfect illustration of what women experience during perimenopause and menopause. That sort of movement from the archetype of the ingenue, you know, young, hot and fuckable, to the crone, the old wizened witch, the quote unquote, crazy cat lady.

In stories, she's often highly knowledgeable, but invisible and ignored in the workplace. This can leave women feeling like they have to chase youth. I make no value judgments whatsoever about cosmetic interventions, but what I hate is that women feel like they don't have a choice, that if they fail to project that sort of hot, young ingenue look, that they're risking their professional longevity. And the reality is that, well, the ingenue does have value in most societies, but that doesn't necessarily translate into influence or power. I feel like much of the MeToo movement is kind of a case study of that. And in the workplace, this didn't become a real issue if your power rests more on your appearance than your results, your relationships, your gravitas. So this is the major mind fuck that can confront us as we grapple with menopause at work. At the same moment where we're supposed to be gaining invisibility and power, thanks to our skills and experience, we're simultaneously losing some of our power in the eyes of the larger culture. You know, if professional value is that line that moves upwards from our 20s to retirement, then societal value, for women at least, is often a line that moves downwards from our 20s to retirement. And menopause is where those two lines tend to intersect on the graph. And we can be hyper conscious that there's this sort of window of opportunity where we have both high professional value and high social value, and that it's closing right before our eyes. I'm not going to claim any sort of neat, simple, do it yourself solutions here in this episode. I think first and foremost we need to realize, though, how jarring this can be to our identity. And we have to rebuild throughout menopause our self concept, really, and adjust our mindset to match. And that's work that's often best done with a coach or a therapist. And it's also absolutely necessary if you want to feel that inner confidence that allows you to project outer confidence and executive presidents. But there are a few things that you can do if you're grappling with these issues of identity, of starting to feel like that window is closing. I think it's a really good time to get strategic and ask, how can I perform at my best? And what does that even mean right now? Maybe that means really educating yourself around menopause and perimenopause.

Maybe it means turning to medication. Or maybe it's very tactically adjusting your schedule to account for some of the brain fog or fatigue, or checking in with HR about accommodations that make sense. Another thing that you can do is decide, is this going to be a balance year, a pivot year, or growth year for you? Maybe grappling with this new reality means you want to take a year to really reestablish your own self confidence, your sense of self. Or maybe it's the push that makes you think it's time for a pivot. But I also think it's not all a bad news story. I want to try to end on a positive note here that one thing that you can do is embrace that sense of yourself as a quote unquote crone, right? So what I

mean by this is like you might explore some ways of contributing that specifically do tap into your knowledge, your wisened side.

So for example, taking on something like board service where you might contribute in meaningful ways in a room of veritable equals and that pays dividends, that is experience and connection that you can take back into other contexts. So even though I can't claim that there are easy answers to each of these questions, I am really heartened by the amount of conversation and research that is going on in this space. And I think that can make us all hopeful for the years ahead as we have these conversations with our friends in our workplaces and with each other.

Are you ready to step into a life for success at work and success at home go hand in hand? Then it's time for the Mental Offload's Shutdown Ritual. It's a proven practical method to help you log off and leave work behind. You can owe your evenings and be present with the people you love. And the Shutdown ritual makes it easy gain the power to truly walk away from work and be present with the people who matter most to you. It's just what you need if you want to achieve big things in the world without losing your mind. Ready to reclaim your time and your peace of mind? Go to www.thementaloffload.com/shutdown and get your free download of the shutdown ritual. That's www.thementaloffload.com/shutdown and join me next week for the next episode of the Mental Offload Podcast.