One of the most intelligent and competent people I have ever had the privilege of knowing was a woman who didn’t present herself as anything but a good worker and team player during our initial interview conversation. Her resume included some outstanding previous engagements, but she didn’t act like the brilliant aerospace engineer that she truly was as evidenced by her past work experiences.
After a few weeks on our project team she began to display capabilities and insight indicating that she had more knowledge and intelligence regarding the work we were doing than any of the others on our small design team. Over a period of almost a year, I was increasingly impressed by her statements in response to questions during our project technical meetings. However, it was only when she was directly referenced or queried, did she speak up and display her intelligence about our project and demonstrate her professional capability.
During the early weeks with this woman on this project, my major focus was on trying to determine why she was not more forthcoming. We had several conferences regarding her work and her personal attitudes. I wanted to move her into a position of more responsibility, as a project lead or project manager, but was hesitant to put her into a position where she might be more pressured. It finally came to light that she had experienced a considerable amount of covert and overt discrimination and denigrating comments (mansplaining and others) during her college years and in her early work place assignments. So we focused on improving her confidence and interaction familiarity with the other members of our group. That began to show significant promise as she began to see how the other engineering folks accepted and encouraged her in both her work activity as well as inviting her into their off work pastimes.
Once she was more comfortable within our crew, and many counseling sessions between the two of us, she began to show more, do more and impress the entire team with her outstanding capabilities. Gradually she shed her protective walls and became more interactive and outgoing. Her forced introvert personality was overcome and replaced by the truly excellent personality that she had kept hidden.
When our project hit snags, she was the first person to start the processes to determine potential solutions and to worked with the team to implement those solutions. She was always ready to share and support the other team members when situations arose. And the other engineers responded positively.
She was finally displaying a more confident demeanor, was recognized by the executives in our company with excellence awards, and financial awards for her suggestions of effective/efficient process modifications. It became obvious to me that she had moved on forward from her reticence earlier and was a strong candidate for upward promotion. We moved her into a team lead position and by the time our multi year program was completed, she had moved into a Project Manager and then a Program Manager position, my old position since I had been promoted to Division level just before my retirement.
Now in my retirement years, I recall the people who I had the honor of working with and managing. I will often take to my computer and access those special forums for our professional environment to follow along with some of my former team mates. It gives me great pleasure to see examples that this woman has continued to grow in her own way to enhance and expand her ability and her self confidence. Considering that she was now in an executive position and a presenter of technological interests for large audiences she had definitely come a long way from when she first interviewed for an aerospace engineering position with our company. And it was obvious that she had learned to:
Musings of a Geriatric Curmudgeon 