The Courage to Be Seen: The Cost of Hiding

Part 2 of a month-long series

Last week, I wrote about the day I stopped editing myself.

I shared the story of a promotion, a move from Detroit to Atlanta, a leader named Patti, a man I love named Rob, and the decision to come out at 30 and stop hiding parts of who I was.

What struck me most afterward was not the number of responses. It was what people responded to.

Some people connected with the Pride story. Some with Atlanta. Others with Patti. But many connected with the editor.

That quiet voice that decides what feels safe to reveal and what needs to stay hidden.

The part of us that changes a word, leaves out a detail, softens an ambition, swallows a question, minimizes a struggle, or carefully manages how much of ourselves other people get to see.

That response stayed with me because it reminded me of something important.

Hiding is not only an LGBTQ+ experience. In many ways, coming out isn’t either. Both are deeply human experiences.

Most people know what it feels like to carry something they are not sure is safe to reveal. Maybe it is a mistake you hope no one notices. A question you are afraid to ask. A financial struggle you do not talk about. A dream that feels too risky to say out loud. A health diagnosis. A family challenge. A belief that feels out of step with the people around you.

The details may be different, but the experience is remarkably familiar.

And if there is one thing I wish I had been taught and understood earlier in life, it is this:

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The cost of hiding is almost never limited to the thing we are hiding.

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It spills into everything else.

For years, I thought hiding was protecting me. In some ways, it was.

The editor and the chameleon I wrote about last week developed for a reason. They helped me navigate situations that felt uncertain, avoid conversations I was not ready to have, and manage outcomes that felt beyond my control.

What I did not understand at the time was that survival strategies have a way of lingering long after the danger has passed.

What begins as protection can slowly become habit. And habits have a way of shaping our lives.

The strange thing about hiding is that it rarely feels heavy at first. At first, it feels practical. Reasonable. Responsible, even.

You leave out a detail. You avoid a conversation. You tell yourself you will deal with it later. You make a small adjustment here and another one there.

Over time, the adjustments become routine. The routine becomes normal. And eventually you stop noticing how much energy it takes.

That was certainly true for me.

I became so accustomed to managing perceptions and pleasing others that I no longer recognized it as work.

But it was work.

It was work to anticipate questions before they were asked. To decide whether a story about my weekend included Rob or not. To remember which version of my life different people knew. To constantly assess whether a conversation felt safe.

Looking back, I do not think the hardest part was fear.

The hardest part was fragmentation.

Different people knew different versions of me. Friends knew one story. Family knew another. Colleagues knew another. And I was the one responsible for keeping all of those versions aligned.

That is exhausting work.

It is also surprisingly lonely.

Not because people are absent. In many ways, I was surrounded by people I cared about and people who cared about me.

The loneliness came from feeling unseen. From knowing people liked me, respected me, and wanted to connect with me, while quietly wondering whether they would feel the same way if they knew the whole story.

It is difficult to feel fully connected when parts of you are always standing just outside the conversation.

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The burden was not simply what I was hiding. The burden was carrying it.

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Looking back, I think that is one of the reasons coming out felt so transformative.

Yes, it changed what people knew about me. But more importantly, it changed what I no longer had to carry.

When I stopped editing myself, I did not suddenly become a different person. I became more available to the life I already had.

More present.

More connected.

More curious.

More confident.

More willing to take risks.

More willing to build deeper relationships.

The energy I had spent protecting myself became available for living.

I did not recognize that immediately. I noticed it over time. I noticed it in conversations that felt easier, in relationships that became deeper, in opportunities I was more willing to pursue, and in the growing sense that the distance between who I was and who others knew me to be was finally shrinking.

Years later, I began noticing a version of the same dynamic in organizations.

People hide concerns because they fear conflict. They hide mistakes because they fear judgment. They hide questions because they worry they should already know the answer. They hide ideas because they are unsure how others will respond.

Most of the time, they are trying to protect themselves.

But protection comes at a cost.

Organizations pay for it in silence. Teams in missed opportunities. Leaders  in incomplete information. And people in energy they could be investing elsewhere.

Patrick Lencioni has spent the past two decades teaching that trust is the foundation of healthy teams. Not predictive trust, the kind that says, “I trust you to do what you said you would do.” Rather, vulnerability-based trust, the kind that allows people to say, “I was wrong,” “I need help,” “I don’t know,” or “I’m concerned.”

I agree.

But I have also come to believe that trust becomes possible when people spend less energy protecting themselves and more energy contributing to one another.

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The best teams are not fearless.

The best teams create enough safetythat people no longer have to carry their fears alone.

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That is one of the reasons belonging matters so much.

Belonging is not simply about feeling accepted. Belonging is about creating conditions and environments where people can redirect their energy away from self-protection and toward connection, contribution, creativity, and growth.

The cost of hiding rarely appears on a spreadsheet. You will not find it in a budget. You will not see it in a quarterly report.

But it shows up everywhere every day inside organizations.

In hesitation.In disengagement.

In guarded conversations.

In ideas that never get shared.

In relationships that never deepen.

In potential that never gets realized.

And perhaps that is why courage matters.

Not because courage guarantees acceptance. It does not. I know that firsthand.

But courage creates the possibility of connection. And connection creates the possibility of belonging.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that belonging is not something we find. It is something we build.

One honest conversation at a time.

Next week in The Courage to Be Seen: Belonging Is Not Agreement.

What Pride taught me about acceptance, respect, and why belonging has less to do with sameness than most people think.

If you found this blog post helpful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any comments, please share them below.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Finke is a human-centered leadership practitioner, consultant, and founder of Experience Willow. Through his writing and work, he helps leaders create the conditions where people feel seen, valued, connected, and able to do their best work. He believes that when we get the human experience right, performance follows.