Today I am thankful that I worked from home most of the day, mostly successfully. Just about every senior and mid-level colleague of mine is across the country, several time zones away, at a big conference. I should know more about why they are all there than I do. So I wore jeans and spent most of the day working at home while someone fixed our landline phone. (Yes, we still have one.) I am doing a lot of writing, again, mostly successfully. It feels wonderful. And I’ve decided that more writing leads to more writing — at least in my present mindset. Writing here doesn’t take away from writing for work, in fact the opposite. I am keeping myself open and the juices flowing. Hmm. This looks suspiciously like abundance over scarcity.
I may never write the post about all the lessons I learned in the year-long (slightly more), very challenging work project that I finished up a few weeks ago. I may live them instead, which is also useful. But one thing I do want to write about is my Sheryl Sandberg moment.
Throughout this project, my boss has made the big-deal, high profile, must-win-the-audience presentations. That’s appropriate: he’s the major name in our field, and he’s who most audiences want to see. Earlier this month, though, there was a pretty big event that my boss couldn’t attend, so I was the main presenter of our work.
It was tremendously freeing to travel without my boss. I realized that in his absence, I was the carrier of his power and of our (considerable) institutional power. And that meant that my audience’s default position was that I was correct. Unless I said something flamingly stupid, my audience would assume I was correct. That was a very cool feeling.
I also realized that I knew more about this project than anyone else. I didn’t know more about our client than anyone else, but I did know more about our recommendations for the client, and the whole picture we were painting for the client. That, too, was empowering. I was in control of the story (mostly…. but more on that in a minute).
And, finally, I realized that people don’t necessarily follow what a person says in a presentation. They walk away with an impression — of confidence, intelligence, clarity or arrogance, insecurity, confusion. But very few people are going to remember any statistic or detail. They may remember two or three main points. Mostly they just remember whether they thought “that was good” or “that was a waste of time.”
And I decided to use all those realizations to my advantage. So I ascended to the podium and gave pretty good presentation. I had some rotten moments in Q&A when I completely flubbed a question that I knew was coming, AND flubbed a related follow-up, but I felt like the overall impression was that I was a person who knew what I was talking about and wasn’t trying to go beyond what I knew.
What I didn’t realize was that being a woman was itself a huge advantage for me in that situation. After the presentation and Q&A, I mingled a little, which I rarely do, and women seemed to seek me out. A very chic investment banker made a point of telling me she was impressed with the presentation. Another woman who is really important in this community told me she was so glad to hear a woman speaking because that never happens (I believe her. I was in a place that has a very traditional, conservative business culture, which is part of the reason that this place is falling apart.) A darling 85-year-old philanthropist with false eyelashes as long as my pinkie finger said, “Oh my gosh, I just think you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever seen!”
I do a lot of work in places that have been battered economically over the past several decades. The people in places can’t get over their losses, and they can’t see that their communities still have some economic strengths. All they see is the loss. I said to a group of women gathered around me, “This place is like a lot of professional women I see. It can’t be forthright about acknowledging its assets. It’s like a woman who keeps saying ‘Oh, I used to be thinner, I used to be prettier.'” And in that moment, I felt like we had such a strong connection.
And I also realized that it was a powerful thing for me to notice about myself. At the time, I thought that it just meant that I should put myself out there more, that I do have the ability to connect with people and that’s not nothing, and that I don’t have to apologize for what I lack. But there’s something bigger and nicer that just emerged for me as I was writing this. I’m starting to fear the future, and the loss of prettiness, and function, and strength, and memory, and energy and health, and people I love and possibility. If I can tell rust belt cities that the future could be really great, even if it’s not the kind of great that the past was, and not the kind of great they once imagined, I can tell myself (and you, dear readers) the same thing.
(Really, the next post will be about shoes or something completely fluffy.)
Another Door 
Love all the insights here. A grad school advisor once told me that a good presentation in my field should start with a memorable anecdote, hit three major points, and end earlier than anyone would have hoped. I like the idea of making it about the presentation as distinct from the material; if you’re only reading something, folks could read it for themselves, presumably somewhere more comfortable than, say, a hotel conference room.
I have always found your physical presence to be energized, intelligent, and inspiring!
You have clearly forgotten a particular bus ride in Siberia, circa 1990.