It’s Not His Problem

January 23, 2017

A friend of mine — an accomplished, badass, take-no-prisoners entrepreneur, told me recently about her first foray into an all male board room as a partner at Peat Marwick & Company (now KPMG) in the late 1970s. I was ready for another “I said something and no one listened until a man in the room said the same thing” story.  Yes, yes, blah, blah, I’ve heard that one before.  But her story was different.

After sitting in that board meeting and thinking, “Why is no one in this room suggesting the most obvious solution to the problem at hand?” My friend spoke up and said, “I’m new, so maybe I'm missing something, but…” and went on to expound her solution to the issue the group was struggling with.  When she finished, the room fell silent, and then the mood changed.  These men were angry.  They were angry that she had presented the simple – and obvious – solution that none of them had.

She likes to tell this story as the moment she learned how to give credit to others.  After that day, to save herself, she started giving credit for her great ideas to her male colleagues. (Don’t worry.  She doesn’t do that anymore.)

To me, the real lesson of this story — and her triumph, although she didn’t know it at the time — was that she was a strong enough presence in that room that those men, who had never experienced a woman in their midst, did listen to her.  They respected her enough to credit her with her own idea, rather than ignoring her and then stealing it from her five minutes later. 

What makes her story different?  How did she earn respect in that moment, when so many others get plowed over and ignored?  Well, my friend knows her own power.  She is not intimidated in new situations, or in hostile territory.  And you feel that when you’re with her.

That is not to say that every woman who has ever been ignored in a boardroom is weak.  (We’ve all known those situations where you are the most brilliant, self-possessed, masterful person in the room, but some guy is still insecure enough to make a joke about your ass.)  But the ugly truth is that some of us are.  Weak, that is.  Or intimidated.  Or insecure.  And we can’t afford to be. 

As senior executive women we still have to be more self-possessed, more controlled, smarter, stronger, and shrewder than those around us to move ahead.  Is it fair?  Nope.  Is it the way it is? Yep.

Consider it the dues we’re paying for our daughters’ and granddaughters’ ultimate freedom.  Just as women who came before us fought for our rights in the street, and in the courts, it’s now our turn to do our part.  It’s no longer institutional freedoms we’re fighting for.  It’s freedom from our own personal demons — from years of learned timidity, self-doubt, and habitual acquiescence.

My friend earned the respect, and anger, of a bunch of men in a boardroom in 1978 because she knew she was powerful.  She walked into that room as an equal— not because anyone gave her the right to, but because she already knew it was her right to.  And that’s something the rest of us are still learning to do in 2016.

Women’s leadership is not about appearing confident.  It’s about being powerful, from the inside out.

 

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