This article is written by Neave Beard, Researcher Essex County Council_. This article is one of the finalists in Apolitical’s 2020 women in government writing competition._

It’s common knowledge that women are generally humbler than men.

And yet, women who are given the chance often make better leaders, according to Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.

But being humble and being confident don’t have to be mutually exclusive, even if for women in the workplace it often feels like they are.

I could spend this entire article unpacking why women experience a crisis of confidence more often than our male counterparts. I could write another article altogether on how that lack in confidence is depriving our organisations and institutions of countless brilliant ideas.

But I’d rather focus on how we can reverse the trend. This is how I reversed it for myself.

Being a young woman in the workplace can be intimidating at first. You’re thinking you don’t have the experience necessary to have a valid point of view and that your age means you don’t know as much as everyone else around the table.

You think speaking up risks embarrassment of someone contesting your input by using facts that you simply wouldn’t know, being new to an organisation. You’ve grown up learning that institutionalised misogyny means your voice won’t be respected even once you feel like you have the experience needed to back yourself up.

Let me share the moment I transformed my perception and came to realise the advantage in this seemingly disadvantageous situation.

We know women are interrupted more, get less time on the stage and are generally less heard in decision-making meetings than men

I was enjoying a post-work refreshment at the local watering hole when I got into a passionate conversation with a man I hadn’t met before. We chatted politics and policy, it was vibrant, lively and brilliant.

It wasn’t until the next day that I realised my passionate conversationalist was a director of my organisation, someone with whom I had just had a no holes barred political discussion, in a pub, in my first week. And that’s when I realised my value as a young woman.

I was offering a fresh perspective. An unlikely mouthpiece. A memorable image that challenges those in charge in a non-threatening and civil way. From then on, I transformed how I viewed myself in meetings and reflected upon the opportunity I had.

This was the opportunity to surprise people, to use being underestimated as leverage, and to make my voice even more memorable than if I hadn’t been underestimated.

If you go to the store to grab a bunch of bananas and you get exactly what you paid for, you’re more likely to forget about them the moment they’re used and discarded.

But if you go to the shop for bananas and only when you get home does it occur that each has an antenna — yes, bananas not just as telephone props, but real cellphones! — then you’ll probably never look at a real banana the same way again.

A comically absurd example maybe, but the point is that while bananas are in no way inferior to the idea of banana-phones (we need real bananas) unexpected or hidden assets challenge our assumptions and so makes us remember to associate ideas differently.

Once I realised this superpower, it then came time to employ strategies that actually gave me the space to challenge assumptions, I sought out the soapbox and put myself on it.

We know women are interrupted more, get less time on the stage and are generally less heard in decision-making meetings than men. So how to combat this, now that I believed that what I had to say was valuable?

At a recent event during a speaker series I had arranged as co-facilitator of our organisations young persons’ network, I was given some strong and simple advice by a director at my organisation, to get my voice out there. Sit. Opposite. The. Speaker. That’s it.

Go into a meeting having reviewed the agenda, bring a short, well-researched soundbite and sit opposite the speaker. You’re more likely to get their attention and be able to time your input for maximum effect.

Now this is all very well and good, but in a virtual setting it makes absolutely no sense. But if anything, it’s actually easier to achieve this now by using the hands-up function.

It doesn’t require the awkward and daunting task of interrupting someone so you can talk, you can time your input to perfection, and it requires the chair, and everyone else involved, to read your name. All this furthers your memorability.

These issues I’ve mentioned aren’t “women’s issues”. We make up 50% of the population, something that affects that kind of proportion of human beings seems like a humanity issue to me (illuminating revelation kindly given by Caroline Criado-Perez in her amazingly frustrating book Invisible Women).

Organisations are at best foolish and at worst negligible if they don’t act and stop missing out on moments of brilliance from quiet voices. But for now, use your superpower, we will all benefit from it. — Neave Beard

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