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How can you improve the way you are viewed by your management team?

Posted in Woman Executive on February 14, 2012
There are (1) comments permalink

Brooke is the VP of Marketing for an auto parts manufacturer. She is the only woman member of her company’s senior management team. Brooke has worked in the company for 5 years prior to being promoted to VP and has held the job for the last six months. Everyone seemed to welcome her on the team, however she feels very isolated despite the fact that she is comfortable with each co-worker individually. The guys on the team all seem to be friends, and have side conversations about sports; a hobby Brooke does not share. Brooke works really hard and has a long history of showing bottom line results. Good results, however, don’t seem to help overcome her feeling like an outsider when the group gets together for management meetings

What can Brooke do to improve her comfort level during meetings?
What conversation topics can she spark with the team other than sports?
Is there anything Brooke can do outside of the meetings that would help?

Comments (1)

LDGT200 posted on: April 16, 2012

My best advice is to learn to be comfortable being different. It took me many years to realize this. At first I tried to fit it, learned to play golf, tried to participate in conversation topics I did not care about, etc. But none of that mattered. Even when I participated in these things, I was still uncomfortable because it was not of interest and did not come naturally to me. Once I decided to focus on work, but create small talk about things going on outside of work like vacations, family and restaurants I felt more comfortable and my coworkers did to. They talked to me more, we all got along better. We were different and we all knew it. Bottom line is that men know how to talk with women. They all have wives, girlfriends, daughters, mothers. So for me, being myself worked much better than trying to fit in as someone I was not. When it came to work topics I always spoke with authority and never had any issues.