Being a Woman in the Room Without Becoming Someone Else

There’s a lot of advice about how women should behave if we want to be taken seriously at work.

Speak up. Stop apologizing. Be confident. Take up space. Don’t qualify your opinions. Negotiate. Be assertive.

Then comes the fine print. Don’t be too assertive. Don’t be intimidating. Don’t be emotional. Don’t be difficult. Be approachable. Be collaborative. Be likable. It’s a pretty exhausting job description.

For a long time, I thought becoming a leader meant learning how to fit some version of that mold. I had an image of leadership that was polished, serious, and always certain.

The more leadership experience I’ve gained, the less interested I am in performing it. I can be warm and still make a hard decision. I can care deeply about the people I work with and still hold them accountable. I can laugh in a meeting and still be the person responsible for what happens next. I can say, “I don’t know. Let me find out.” I can change my mind when someone else has a better idea.

None of those things diminish authority. If anything, I think they strengthen it.

That realization has changed how I show up at work.

I still think about how I communicate. I prepare. I pay attention to the room. I know that leadership requires self-awareness. But self-awareness and self-editing are not the same thing.

Women can spend an enormous amount of energy managing how we are perceived. Sometimes that energy would be much better spent becoming excellent at what we do.

Know your subject. Ask good questions. Listen carefully. Make decisions. Own your mistakes. Give other people credit. Speak when you have something to say. Learn when you don’t know something. That is leadership, too.

And I think we need to talk about it more because the people coming up behind us are watching.

If every woman who reaches a leadership position feels like she has to become harder, quieter, louder, or less herself to stay there, we haven’t actually expanded our idea of leadership very much.

I want younger women to see that there isn’t one personality type that belongs at the table. You don’t need to become someone else when you get the title. The real work is becoming confident enough to bring more of yourself with you.