The Best Business Advice I Received from my Dad

A few years ago, I had a conversation with my dad that changed everything. 

Let me back up. When I first started making my way up the org chart, I was invited into a LOT of meetings. If you are on the managerial or executive team, you know what I am talking about. Back to back meetings from 8am-4pm, trying to fit in bio breaks, snacks and water station fill-ups in between. Most people look at a calendar like that and dread it.

I loved it.

I learned early on in my marketing career that if I can listen in to conversations and be next to the leaders of the company, I could understand how they thought and why they make the decisions they do. I could be a fly on the wall soaking up all of the insider knowledge and experience. I didn’t mind that I never had time to check email or that every time I walked out of the meeting, my direct reports would be shouting my name trying to get two minutes of my time for approvals and direction. It gave me so much energy to be running back and forth between my desk and conference rooms. Until, I was ready to use my voice. Once I achieved a role that put me in the room to make some of the key decisions with executives, I started to feel a whole different feeling.

Resentment. 

I looked around the room and saw a singular perspective. I was sitting in a variety of different meetings where 95% of the people in the room looked the same. I was often the only woman in the room. I started to feel infuriated. My ideas and insight were being dismissed because I wasn’t of the majority. For about a week, I sat in every meeting with my arms crossed and my posture closed off. I spoke with angst and I was combative. It felt like I had to defend every single woman that wasn’t in the room with me and that was a lot of pressure. 

I went to my dad, a business man and executive with over 30 years of work experience. I remember it so clearly. We were in his car in the parking lot of Disneyland for my son’s 2nd birthday. Everyone else in our family was in another car so I took the opportunity to vent all my frustration as we drove through each level trying to find a parking spot. He heard me out, sympathized with me and then said words that impacted my whole view of the situation.

If you want to make an impact, stop complaining and start showing up. 

He told me that while I was completely valid in my feelings and in the fact that I was indeed the only woman in a leadership role, I couldn’t show up and throw a tantrum. The worst thing I could do for myself and for any woman trying to break into that executive room is to constantly bring attention to the fact that I was the minority. If I did that, that’s all everyone else in the room would see. They wouldn’t be able to see my talent or skill because I keep drawing their attention to the thing that I saw as different. By sitting there with my arms crossed I was making it all about me, not about the anything that I saw as unjust.

“Instead”, he said, “Be the most prepared. Be the most intelligent person in the room and they won’t be able to help but listen” 

From that conversation on, I started showing up as the employee that brought value to the team. I stopped complaining and I started influencing change. I’m sure I still got comments about “staying in my lane” or skipped over because the owner of the company had a bias about working women, but I knew that I was the most prepared person in the room. I could leave every day knowing that I was doing my part to make the impact I needed to. I started to see these meetings as opportunities for responsibility. I started to notice that while I might be different in a sea of white men, there were men in that room that saved me a seat at the table. They would ask me for my opinion or give me an opportunity to share an update about a project and they made it their responsibility to see me grow. Because of their support, I saw that I could also use my role as a way to keep opening the door for diverse voices and give the same opportunity to my team members.

My Dad was absolutely right.

Since that conversation with my Dad years ago, my perspective of how I show up work has changed. In each new role I took after that, I was proud of the positive shift I made in each company. After I changed my attitude, people saw me as a leader. People on my team trusted me, colleagues worked alongside me and over time, I became one of the most valued employees. My voice was heard and my acumen started to hold weight to the senior leaders of the company. Rather than being the employee in the room that sighed and grunted, I showed up knowing that I was responsible for bringing relevant and useful insight. I used my voice for the issues that mattered and I made an impact.

There are a lot of inequities in the workplace, and it is completely reasonable to feel frustrated, heartbroken and even wounded by it. Ultimately, there are a lot of factors that could hinder our ability to make big changes in workplace culture and in policy. By making it my responsibility to be a leader, it also meant that I had to know when policies weren’t aligned with conversations. My shift in perspective allowed me to clearly see when it was time for me to leave that job or environment.

I am not saying you can change the world if you just change your attitude, but I am definitely saying we can’t change policies or work culture with our “it’s not fair” attitude. 

We can choose to show up and be the most prepared so that everyone else can’t help but listen. 

We can choose to support those around us so that we grow together.

I won’t be able to change the big systemic issues that are needed for everyone to succeed at work but I can do my part day by day to support those around me. Just as Vincent Van Gogh once said, “The great..is a success of the little things that are brought together.”