React or Respond: How to protect your confidence in senior leadership meetings

Have you ever been in a senior leadership meeting where everyone gets a ‘that’s a good idea’ from the boss, except you? Or when someone says, ‘We tried that years ago, it didn’t work’ to your idea. There are times when a single comment like that can impact how you contribute to a meeting.

The comment itself may be brief, but the sting it creates is not. Does this sound familiar?

An emotional reaction envelops you, your attention is pulled outward, and suddenly you are caught in the subtext of the meeting. You say something reactively, and the conversation escalates or worse, shut down. Later that evening, you’re still in it, offloading to your partner, all the while, your confidence has taken a dive.

I see this pattern quite regularly in my coaching work with senior women in technology. I have to say, it is never a reflection of competence, but rather our very human tendency to default into, or move between, the two different modes of initiating or responding in a conversation.

These modes represent the two different states from which we (all) operate. One shaped by our past experiences which often leads to reactive responses, the other shaped by the present leading to measured responses. Let’s call them our unhelpful and helpful states.

It is normal to move between the two states; indeed, it would be a very extraordinary world if people were consistently helpful! But the ability to recognise when you have moved or are about to move into an unhelpful state creates a point of empowerment.

For women in tech, then, who face more than their fair share of bias, a dismissive comment or controlling tone can hurt more than we like to admit. But the comment itself isn’t necessarily the problem (that is a different blog post altogether!) The problem is what happens next. If the emotion provoked goes unrecognised, you might slip into an unhelpful state. You might feel something like 'this isn't fair' or have a sense of being undermined, and instead of responding deliberately, you become defensive, forceful, or imprecise.

And then, your contribution loses its impact, which in turn can lead to further defensiveness/offensiveness from others in the room, creating a cycle that is difficult to disrupt, too.

If it sounds like a lot. It is.

In contrast, a response from your helpful state is calm and enquiring. You take a pause and ask: “Can you say more about that?” or “Help me understand your concern”. You engage with the point rather than being driven by your frustration, indignation, or anger.

Developing awareness internally, however, takes some practice. It begins with noticing when an emotional reaction occurs. If, in the moment, you can take a beat and acknowledge it, you create that point of empowerment I spoke about, and the choice between reacting or responding becomes yours.

One way to do this is to wholeheartedly accept and embrace the emotion. Let’s say you feel frustration, accompanied by the thought: “Why do my ideas always get attributed to someone else?” While this may reflect a real pattern, if you acknowledge the emotion and invite it to sit quietly beside you, you accept it rather than suppress or act on it. Think of it as becoming friends with your emotions: inviting them in, but booting them out when you've had enough of them.

In doing this, you are better able to operate from your helpful state, grounded in the present, to shape a more reasoned and deliberate response.

This shift can change your internal focus back to understanding. You become more willing, regardless of how a comment is delivered, to consider whether there may be something of value within it. You can ask questions without prejudice, focusing on the issue at hand rather than on how it was expressed.

However, responding rather than reacting does not guarantee your ideas and contributions will be adopted, but it will increase the likelihood your contribution is taken seriously, and more importantly still, you are far more likely to feel seen and heard, which in turn, contributes to a more stable sense of confidence.

With practice, confidence stops being something that happens to you and starts being something you build, from the inside out.

While complexity in our environments will always exist and bias will endure, communicating from your helpful state will change your experience of participating in it. Put simply, there is a greater sense of agency. Conversations are more likely to be constructive. And confidence at senior level, rather than fluctuating with each interaction, becomes something that develops steadily over time. What’s more, when you communicate from your helpful state, you more readily draw others into theirs, creating a virtuous cycle that strengthens your strategic influence.

This is a win-win by anyone's standards.

If you recognise the sting of a comment that follows you home, a Coaching Experience Call is a good place to start. It's 45 minutes of real coaching.