Hi friends,
One of my favorite Sam-isms is “I wish I had the confidence of a mediocre white man.” You know the type – the kind of guy with a questionable work ethic who’s average at his job but who believes with absolute, unshakable certainty that he is the foremost expert on, well, everything and certainly the most deserving of any promotion. Meanwhile, you could quiz me on my own life experiences and core memories, and I would still question my knowledge. “I don’t know, someone else might be better equipped to answer these very specific questions about a unique situation that happened during my childhood. Not sure if I’m the most qualified.” Sadly, that’s a common occurrence with women. No matter how talented, educated, or accomplished we are, we doubt our qualifications or second guess ourselves. For me, being the only woman in a room full of self-assured men has always magnified those insecurities, especially when I was younger.
Fast forward to more recently, Sam and I found ourselves dealing with one of the aforementioned mediocre white men. Not just any MWM either. This was a misogynistic, overly confident man with no respect for women (especially those younger than him) and no desire to hear anyone’s opinions but his own. Introduced through a shared business partner, we found ourselves collaborating on a project together. While we were optimistic about the collaboration, it quickly became apparent that this man did not play well with others. We routinely had calls expecting to discuss our thoughts or brainstorm, only to have him talk over us at every opportunity and dismiss our ideas. He did the same to other partners that we were collaborating with on the project. When we began creating meeting agendas in advance to make the calls more efficient and productive, he would immediately steamroll over them and tell us all the “more important” topics that needed to be discussed before we got to ours. On numerous occasions, we’d lay out project plans, assign duties, and determine deadlines, only to have him question them or act as though they'd never been discussed the next time we spoke. Maybe that’s why he missed every agreed upon deadline.
Needless to say, it was an extremely stressful few months for me and Sam. Perhaps the worst part of the experience was that despite all his "big ideas" (which were often just him restating things that we had already come up with) and name dropping, he didn't do any real work. What was supposed to be a 50-50 partnership ended up being more like 80-20 (and I'm being generous, I think Sam and a few of our other partners would say closer to 90-10). We did virtually everything for the project we were working on from sourcing materials, creating a promotional plan, identifying speakers, inviting attendees, and securing food. He did nothing before or during to assist or alleviate our stress.
Then, a funny thing happened. After the project concluded, he reached out and with all the confidence of a quintessential MWM with no concept of his own shortcomings, he told that we owed him money for all of his contributions. We were dumbfounded and unsure what to do. For about .2 seconds we questioned ourselves. Then, we decided if he could have that kind of undeserved confidence, we should be absolutely assured of our own abilities. We responded with a detailed explanation of our agreement, each party’s obligations (shockingly, he’d delivered on nothing he was supposed to), a financial breakdown, and a polite request that he leave us alone. Despite our boldness, we were wracked with self doubt and insecurity after hitting “send”, only to be incredibly relieved when he did just that.
The experience taught us a valuable lesson. Not only had we stood our ground, we realized that we can and should be confident in our own abilities. We were far more qualified than the man we’d worked with and he had confidence in spades. So why shouldn’t we?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a challenge for us. Some days we feel like we have no idea what we’re doing. But we try to remind ourselves that we’re awesome and we belong here, doing what we’re doing! So the next time you feel insecure, we encourage to summon some MWM energy and fake it till you make it!
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