Queen Bee

But the piece de resistance was the skirt tucked inside my hosiery.

It has happened to us all. The true injustice was the timeliness of this misfortune. I actually entered the room with my skirt “not fully deployed”, shall we say. Before the start of the engagement, a sympathisizing onlooker approached me with the unpleasant news and I quickly corrected the wardrobe malfunction. So now, how to adjust.

I reached into my metaphorical  “assuredness” bag, and pulled out some backbone, remembering that how I react to this may send a strong message about my character. I remembered a favorite saying: Our story is not so much what happens to us, as what we make of what happens to us.

A reaction of self-despair and embarrassment would only give the experience some legs, so to speak. My first piece of advice – act like nothing happened.  I call it the “act as if …”  So I acted as if it did not happen. I acted as if I was the leadership authority on the premises. I acted as if it was normal to have a little mis-step here and there.

You see, if you act stupid, people think you are stupid. (Substitite “embarrassed”, “unsure”, or dim-witted” as needed).  Recently, a study from the University of California at Berkeley monitored people’s reaction to confident co-workers. When tasked with a project and asked afterwards who was thought of as smartest, those that took initiative were viewed as smarter. These go-getters did not score any higher on intelligence tests, but their confident know-how sent a strong message: act with self-assurance and you are treated as competent.

It’s a strong message for anyone who has felt under fire or been the underdog. This is often a situation to which women can relate because most of us work in a male-dominated environment where we are the minority and easily outvoted. We call our assets our strengths, but some may see them as quirks. A workplace where the my-way-or-the-highway approach makes you feel run over will likely trigger a little self-doubt.

Drive on, woman.