In a world of inspirational memes and #girlpost Instagram posts, it’s easy to forget that we all get stuck at work, or feel like we can’t find a way forward at times. Sue Unerman is the Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCom and Kathryn Jacob OBE is the Chief Executive at Pearl and Dean. Together they wrote The Glass Wall: Success Strategies For Women At Work And Businesses That Mean Business. Each week answer your work questions with pragmatic, honest advice that’s proven to work…
Q: As someone fairly junior in the company, what tactics would you recommend to boost confidence? I'm always the youngest person in meetings meetings - I get overwhelmed by the fear of getting it wrong or not being taken seriously
SU: I can easily remember being there myself, something which people who work with me now, might find surprising. There’s that meeting where you come up with an idea, but you’re too unconfident to say it out loud. Surely someone has already thought of it, or surely it isn’t a good idea. Then someone else might say what you’re thinking, and immediately everyone says what a great idea they have had. And you’re left feeling as though you have missed an opportunity to shine. Sometimes when you’re in a room where people are spouting jargon, it is easy to think that everyone else is an expert.
First let me say that this is a very common human experience, I don’t think it is normal never to feel this lack of confidence. We all go through this. Kathryn, did you feel this at any stage of your career?
KJ: I still feel it sometimes. If I go to a meeting and it takes a different direction I can sometimes feel insecure about any contribution I might make. I think that you need to look at the culture around you and work out where your opportunities are to be heard. It might not be in a big meeting, you could start off with a small group of colleagues and try out your voice/opinions until you feel that you’re happy to expand your audience.
I have gone to lots of meetings where people have spoken extensive tosh seemingly unaware that it isn’t relevant or contributing to the purpose of the meeting.
Sue, one of the things I love about you is that in a couple of sentences you can create an outcome for meetings we have, yet you never dominate proceedings and I think sometimes pithy and measured contributions should be mandatory in meetings rather than wanging on.
SU: Some people may appear to be expert, but actually what they’re expert in is in fact wanging on. I actually heard about someone who presented last week to a colleague who apparently spent 20 minutes on one sentence, but actually didn’t say anything. What a waste of everyone’s time.
KJ: How about becoming the expert in an area that’s different but contributes to the work that you do. Find a subject that is underrated or not fully understood and use that as your platform.
I’m not suggesting huge work here, but taking a different perspective.
SU: I actually did take this approach when I was quite a junior planner/buyer at a media agency. My workplace was dominated by blokes. I simply set myself up as the expert on women’s magazines. It gave me an excuse to make time to read them all, which was fun in its own right, but it also gave me the ability to offer detailed insight into what was going on right now in the real world as far as an important advertising vehicle was concerned. It was loads of work, as Kathryn suggests, it was ownable as a perspective and others began to turn to me when they wanted a point of view in this respect. I didn’t remain the woman’s mag expert, that would have limited my career path, but it had a useful place in creating a profile for myself.
KJ: Being taken seriously is about your perspective of the way that you are treated to some respect. You may be too sensitive to the nuances of responses to your speaking up. And perhaps you could step back from your own perception and look at this dispasstionately. Ask someone you trust if they could give you their view and also to act as a back up in meetings if you get spoken over and or ignored.
SU: One of the interviewees for our book The Glass Wall, success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean business, talked about how women in her workplace actually literally spoke up. She said that she had noticed a remarkable difference between how men and women at the same level talked. They were all about 3 years in from joining at entry level. She told us: 'I have noticed that women of my age in the office, I think we have as a generation developed an upward inflection at the end of our sentences. It basically means that everything that you say sounds like a question, whether or it not is… If they present stuff they don’t sound convinced by it.'
KJ: If you want to be taken seriously try speaking slowly, clearly and have a beginning, middle and end to what you are saying. If it is a regular meeting, prepare and rehearse the point you want to make, that way you’ll know it inside out and be more confident.
SU: you could even get a friend to rehearse with you and ask you a difficult question. I was once on an ITV show about a famous advertising campaign for Wonderbra (remember Hello Boys!). The interviewer was obviously after controversy, so I needed to prepare for the worst. A friend asked me the worst questions he could, and frankly the whole episode was fine because the reality wasn’t at all that extreme. Although I was very glad when it was over
Sue and Kathryn’s book The Glass Wall, Success Strategies For Women At Work And Businesses That Mean Business is available from amazon.
Have you got a question you’d like Sue and Kathryn to answer? Email your questions to feedback@graziamagazine.co.uk. Please note, we will be unable to respond to every single question we receive, and will not be able to respond to any questions personally