You’ve read the brief. You’ve thought about the question. You have a view — a clear, well-formed view that you’ve been turning over all morning. Then someone in the meeting asks for your take. The room looks at you. And the thinking that was right there, seconds ago, becomes suddenly unreachable. You say something partial….
The meeting is moving along. You’ve been listening carefully. And then, without warning, someone turns to you. “What do you think?” Or: “Can you walk us through your view on this?” Or, from a senior stakeholder you haven’t spoken to before: “I’d be interested to hear your take.” The room waits. You know this topic….
You finally said something. You waited for the right moment, found your way into the conversation, opened your mouth — and the first sentence was good. Clear. Exactly what you meant. And then something happened. You added context. Then a caveat. Then an explanation of the caveat. Then, because you weren’t sure the original point…
The meeting ends. You close the laptop, or walk out of the room — and somewhere between the door and your desk, it arrives. The precise point you meant to make. The clear, well-formed response to the question that caught you off guard. The concern you wanted to raise but couldn’t quite assemble in time….
You do the work. You read the brief carefully, think through the problem, prepare more than most people in the room. Your written output is strong. The people who know your work well would describe you as capable, careful, and worth listening to. And then the meeting happens. Someone else shapes the direction. Someone else’s…
You read the brief. You know the project inside out. You’ve thought about the topic more carefully than most people in the room. And you still went blank when asked for your view. Or quiet when you meant to speak. Or scrambling for words in a moment that should have been straightforward. If that’s familiar,…
At some point, most women in this situation have heard a version of the same feedback. You need to speak up more in meetings. You need to be more visible. You need to make sure people hear from you. It’s usually said with good intentions. The person delivering it may even be right that there’s…
The meeting ended twenty minutes ago. You’re back at your desk. And now, without the pressure of the room, the thoughts are arriving in exactly the right order. You open a new email. Start typing. And what comes out is clear, well-structured, precisely what you meant. The point you were trying to make lands in…
You know this topic. You’ve been working on it for months. In a one-to-one with a colleague, or in a smaller meeting with familiar faces, you can explain it clearly and without effort. And then the senior stakeholder walks in. Something shifts. The bar for what counts as a good answer seems to rise. And…
The meeting finished an hour ago. You’re back at your desk, and the thing you wanted to say — the point that didn’t quite make it into the room, or the answer that arrived just a few minutes too late — is sitting there fully formed. You open a new email. Start typing. Then stop….