Professional Development

Two words that branded me as the girl in the room

Several years ago I was in a meeting with several men who were old enough to be my father and, in some cases, my grandfather. I was the only female and the only one under the age 40.

Instead of feeling intimidated, I felt proud and almost powerful. Here is I was this young fresh faced woman in an important meeting. It was exciting.

As we went through the meeting, I shared a couple thoughts, answered questions when asked, but for the most part, I sat quietly taking it all in. Then, at the end of a particularly deep discussion, one of the guys turned to me and said, “Angela, what do you think?”

I thought for a moment, reflecting on the last ten minutes of conversation, and I said:

“I agree.”

Not surprisingly, the room erupted in laughter.

I quickly tried to recover, giving the reasons why I agreed, practically shouting over the laughter. But, it was too late, they had already concluded that I had nothing to offer but, “I agree.”

These two simple words screamed to everyone the room: I’m young and I don’t really know what I’m talking about so I’ll just go ahead and agree with what all of you older, wiser men have to tell me.

I really did agree with what the decisions being made, but I would have been much better off saying something like, “While I agree with the overall decision, here a few things I’d suggest…”

Additionally, had I been more vocal throughout the meeting they wouldn’t have had to ask — they would have already known my opinion.

I didn’t do everything wrong, though:

• I was confident.
• I was prepared. I was able to intelligently answer questions thrown my way.
• I gave suggestions (although probably not as many as I should have).
• I was focused. I knew exactly what was going on and none of it was out of my league.

As for the men in the meeting who laughed at my two-word answer… Thank You. Thank you for challenging me, for reminding me that my opinion is important no matter my age, and for driving me to never act like a “yes-girl” again.