Women feel they should prove they're not emotional at work!

Hello! 👋

Welcome to She Got You!, where I share my conversations with women professionals.

Today’s conversation is with Mitasha Singh, a fractional people leader and angel investor in early-stage startups. She is also the co-founder of All Things Talent, a startup which empowers leaders. It solves for people ops at scale through a suite of services: modern leadership development, cohorts for emerging talent, and fractional HR services.

In our enriching 75-minute (nearly) conversation, we discussed gender from a different lens, common issues employees face at work, and what All Things Talent is up to.

And on that note, here’s how she’s got you! 👇

Sunaina: Please tell me about yourself!

Mitasha: I've been working in people operations for over a decade. I'm an operator, investor, and a relatively new (two-month-old) entrepreneur still figuring it out. I grew up in Bhubaneshwar and lived in Hyderabad, Bombay, Delhi, Bengaluru, England, and the US. I've travelled widely; while I'm still trying to find my roots, Bangalore, for now, feels closest to home.

I love tech, plants, Harry Potter, and art. Work is an integral part of my life, but I try to create a life away from it and live outside the bubbles.

Sunaina: What's All Things Talent about, and what made you start it?

Mitasha: All Things Talent is a venture we (my co-founder Aanchal Arora and I) created to give back and do something meaningful for ourselves by playing around with people ops in a less conventional form.

It's a founders/operators-first community, and we provide talent-related services to companies, regardless of whether they have existing people ops teams.

There are communities for founders, operators, marketers, product folks, designers, and creators—thankfully, we've been seeing a few for HR and people ops, too. However, our priority is more profound; we focus on helping managers or early-stage leaders adopt a people-first mindset.

As we spend more than half our waking lives at work, employees need a solid support system for overall well-being and productivity. So, we help workplaces become more transparent, authentic, efficient, productive, and fun.

Sunaina: Talking about the support system, how important is a support system for women? Why do women lose friendships as they get older?

Mitasha: I don't know if it's conditioning or we choose—that's an important distinction—but we grow distant as we grow older. I've noticed this in my school friends from Bhubaneswar. We often take friendships for granted and don't realise that time is what we must invest in our friendships.

Because love is effort.

We naturally make these efforts for romantic partners—boyfriends or husbands—because making an effort as a couple also becomes a barometer for staying closer to our partner. You'll notice it's easier to take a short two- or four-day trip with the social group you share with your partner. This is because we constantly optimise for time and prioritise what’s in front of us.

Would you instead organise a reunion with your close friends from college in different locations? For 90 per cent of people, the connections formed during such a reunion would be far more fulfilling.

Will it take more effort? Yes! Coordinating, ensuring everyone contributes financially, and maintaining a consistent schedule requires significant mental energy. The challenge lies in prioritising those meaningful connections over convenience and making a lifelong investment.

My divorce made me realise I didn't put enough effort into friendships. I took pride in calling myself a good friend, but I hadn't gone the extra mile except for occasional phone calls. Some of my closest friends faced similar challenges due to the demands of family, work, and relationships.

Transitioning from single to partnered life can significantly impact friendships, especially in your late 20s to early 40s. But I recognise the importance of a support system. Balancing friendships with other commitments requires intentionality.

Sunaina: Right! Is there anything else you've noticed about friendships as we grow older?

Mitasha: I won't distinguish between the importance of male and female friend groups, but I've observed a notable shift in my life. In my 20s, my social circle was predominantly male. However, in my 30s, female friends consistently demonstrated more commitment to maintaining and nurturing our friendships.

When it comes to new friendships, there's always that one woman who becomes incredibly close to you within 1-3 years.

Men, on the other hand, tend to prioritise their careers and immediate families more. As a result, they invest less effort in maintaining friendships outside of these priorities. It's why I've come to appreciate the effort and support typically from a female friends' group. It’s integral, and other women resonate with this.

It might appear like product placement, as I'm an investor in Leap Club, but the whole point of Leap is to enable a solid network and support system for women. I've experienced it first-hand; if not for best female friends and strangers, my last 2-3 years would've been quite painful.

Sunaina: Have you ever experienced gender discrimination at work, and how did you navigate it?

Mitasha: I’ve experienced micro-aggressions, and my gender discrimination journey has been to convince myself that discrimination exists. I've been fortunate to have parents, especially my father, who always viewed me as a child without attaching gender labels. This upbringing allowed me to identify potential gender bias more quickly. For instance, when I encountered personal questions about my marriage and family planning during job interviews, I declined those jobs as those questions seemed intrusive and inappropriate.

Throughout my career, my male mentors and managers encouraged assertiveness and self-advocacy. I don't pick tasks without understanding their logic or rationale. As an employee, I was transparent with my managers. Even when they were tired, they never dismissed me or asked me to do my job. Instead, they would patiently explain. So, I've had various positive examples and haven't experienced blatant gender discrimination.

Instead, I've had to deal with the circumstances of conditioning, especially in people ops or leaders.

Sunaina: What does that mean?

Mitasha: People leaders recognise the conditioning but don’t fathom the impact of society’s discrimination against women. At first glance, dealing with microaggressions or being the lone woman in a boardroom might not seem significant.

People have told me I'm too passionate, dramatic, or impulsive! What took me the longest to understand was that such statements were fundamentally flawed; I often dismissed them as mere expressions of my dramatic nature.

But, at what point do we recognise these remarks reflect gender bias? My perspective shifted when I encountered senior female leaders. Being coached by them, sharing the same space, and hearing their stories of resilience made a difference. Witnessing CEOs openly acknowledge their vulnerabilities and navigate challenges through difficult times made me feel less isolated.

It's perplexing that women professionals are labelled as dramatic while men who express themselves passionately—like throwing their arms in the air during speeches—are celebrated for their enthusiasm or passion.

Understanding micro-discriminations and their various manifestations is quite complex. Women feel the need to go above and beyond to prove they're not overly emotional or dramatic at work. For instance, if you make a pro-employee decision, you may be labelled emotional. Conversely, if you support the CEO while witnessing a 45 per cent attrition rate, what benefit does that serve? If the CEO fails to recognise its impact on the company and tries to navigate the situation while others laugh behind their backs, I’d argue that's emotional behaviour.

Eventually, if you're being petty, biased and personal, that's emotional. If you stand up for people and bring them together, you can call it emotional, but isn't that what you want? Be collective in a mission, and that's what people-ops leaders do: foster a people-first mindset.

CEOs, regardless of their gender, age, or geographical location, must recognise the importance of addressing micro-discrimination because we no longer live in an era where such issues can be overlooked. If you hire someone for a specific salary and they are content with the arrangement, that's great. Employees have more options today; failure to recognise this is a failure to change with time. It's got nothing to do with being business or people-first; it's basic economics.

With the rise in industry standards and demand, you must also rise and do better for your employees.

Sunaina: Right! So, what can companies do to help people understand these micro-aggressions or changes?

Mitasha: Putting into practice processes for young men to understand conditioning has been tough! Because they've mostly seen upper-middle-class, metropolitan women who primarily come from identical families and have lifestyles.

Many don't understand why women set boundaries and that having boundaries doesn't mean not being committed to work. Circadian rhythm is a thing, and so is biology and periods, so expecting all women to be physically active and alert 30 days a month is unfair. Scientifically speaking, we're at our peak 15 days a month, dip for a week and experience certain other things for five days a month. We need rest during our periods. By rest, I mean flexibility. Flexibility for those who need it. That's biology across the globe, my friend!

When I was 25, I needed more rest than in my 30s; today, it's better. However, many of my friends have experienced worsening menstrual symptoms as they've gotten older.

Making the upper urban class understand these things is also tricky because you have to convince many people who have seen equality in their schools, clubrooms, and upper-middle-class clubs, with everyone sharing similar lifestyles. It's hard to make them understand why women prioritise different things as they grow older, why maternity leave policies are important, how we're different and not looking for handouts—and how support for women is significant. They'll understand the plight of rural women; they don't understand why women they hang out with and earn similar pay undergo an invisible load after their marriage.

A woman on maternity leave is usually unsure if she'll get to keep her job when she returns. In many cases, you'll find leaders who appear socially woke and well-informed also firing pregnant women because they see business as a business.

Sunaina: I read your letter to my 13-year-old self, where you spoke about your auto-immune disorder. Can you tell me how you discovered it and what you went through?

Mitasha: I was diagnosed with alopecia when I was 13, and it has lapse and relapse cycles—sometimes it gets better and sometimes worse. There are moments when I get slightly better. It's a fairly common disorder, at least in the developed parts of the world, but not much in India. We've seen other hormonal conditions in Indian women, like psoriasis, vitiligo, eczema, and PCOS, but I haven't met many Indian women with alopecia.

I was a vain teenager who found it surreal and challenging. I'm a Sardarni; I had long hair and couldn't style it or get a trendy cut. My hair was one of those things where if you have too much of something, you can do nothing with it. I went from having long hair to seeing it fall out in clumps, so emotionally, it was tough.

Back then, I read ample resources on the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, one of the trusted and oldest sites based in the US; we still had snake oil salesmen in India. But doctors were sceptical about trying anything as I was too young and not an adult—they were worried about how treatments might affect my system. That way, the doctors were quite gentle and didn't think, "Oh, she has a problem with her looks, so let's put her on 20 meds that'll solve the issue." All those experienced doctors would say it's hair, not eyes, which today's parents and children might find counterintuitive. It may sound like invalidation, but they meant well. I found it helpful because the invalidation helped me understand their logic. They didn't want to put an adolescent on UVB therapy as they weren't sure about its side effects; their therapy only involved well-tested treatments and nothing experimental, new or immunosuppressive treatments.

Research on the connection between gut health, mental health, and bodily inflammation was limited then. There wasn't enough scientific evidence for doctors to identify the root causes of certain conditions. So, for them to connect my puberty, mental health because of it and inflammation to alopecia was a different thing altogether. There's ample research on this now, and medical professionals look at situations more holistically.

Sunaina: Right! So, going back to work, I noticed cohorts for leaders on your website. Is it for first-time managers or first-time leaders?

Mitasha: It's not for first-time managers; we say emerging leaders or newer founders. Even someone who has been a manager for 7-8 years, including myself, will find valuable takeaways from this experience. We all understand what needs to be done and have access to a wealth of information through various media and social platforms, but do we actively apply what we've learned? Not always. If you were to ask my former teams whether they liked working with me, they would likely say yes. However, would they rate me a perfect 10 out of 10? Perhaps not! The truth is we are all works in progress. 

The cohorts (our most accessible and affordable services) are our most modular offerings. We call them a slice of pizza, and it's our way of giving back to the community.

Sunaina: Can you tell me more about how you chose the themes for your cohorts?

Mitasha: Our conversations with senior leadership, including CTOs, VPs, and team leads, profoundly influenced our understanding of organisational challenges. We wanted to solve three problems. 👇

• The challenge is hiring, which goes beyond recruiting suitable candidates! Setting candidate and organisational expectations is the key to keeping both parties content. Our Recruitment Bootcamp addresses this.

• Considering how we seek stimulating work, we've forgotten to put our heads down, focus, and stay accountable. Post-COVID, the lack of focus and accountability has become a challenge. That's the main reason for the Driving Accountability cohort.

• Our flagship cohort, The 10X Manager, approaches being a manager from three lenses: people, yourself, and the management. This cohort helps people foster better relationships with colleagues, become better mentors or guides, etc.

In our personal lives, we frequently seek external support when navigating change, whether through a coach, trainer, dance partner, or music teacher. We've applied this principle to differentiate our workshops by including accountability partners, 1:1 sessions to contextualise learning, and a month-long program with regular nudges and guidance for reinforcement. We also foster a community for each cohort to encourage peer interaction.

So, that was my conversation with Mitasha Singh. Please follow her on LinkedIn to learn more about her and what she does.

I’ll be back with another conversation soon! 👋