You Don’t Have to Make Yourself Smaller to Make Another Woman Feel Secure

It can happen so gradually that you barely notice it.

You let her take the lead in an area where you hold the expertise. You contribute less in meetings. You soften a recommendation you would once have made clearly.

You still know what you think. You have simply begun presenting it with less certainty.

Perhaps another senior woman has started questioning your expertise publicly. She challenges details she readily accepts from somebody else. She dismisses your contribution, interrupts before you have finished or subjects your work to a level of scrutiny that feels increasingly personal.

You sense that your knowledge, visibility or authority makes her uncomfortable.

So you adapt.

You begin preparing more thoroughly for meetings, anticipating where the next challenge might come from. You test your thinking with colleagues before sharing it. You consult more widely and explain more fully, hoping that an abundance of evidence will protect you from being undermined.

Sometimes you withdraw altogether.

This can feel like the safest available response. You want to avoid conflict, public embarrassment and the possibility of being made to look foolish in front of colleagues.

What begins as self-protection can gradually change how you lead.

Authority can carry a cost

New research commissioned by Co-operatives UK helps place this experience within a wider workplace pattern.

In a survey of 2,000 working adults, 58% of women said their authority had been undermined because they were women. More than a third felt they had to work harder to be taken as seriously as their male colleagues.

The findings also reveal why women may decide to accommodate what is happening. Only 21% had reported sexism to HR. More than a quarter of those who did not intervene believed that speaking up would make no difference, while 27% of those who had reported an incident said the problem continued.

These figures do not tell us everything about an individual workplace relationship. They do, however, help explain how women learn to protect themselves.

When your authority has been questioned repeatedly, adaptation can become instinctive. You pay closer attention to how other people might respond. You edit your language, reduce your visibility and make your contribution easier for others to accept.

The fact that the person undermining you is another woman can make the experience particularly difficult to understand.

You may have expected solidarity. You may feel uncomfortable naming the behaviour because you do not want to be accused of criticising another woman. You may spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand her motivation.

Perhaps she feels threatened. Perhaps she is under pressure herself. Perhaps she has also learned that there is limited space for women to hold authority and believes she must protect her position.

Those possibilities may help you understand the context. They do not remove the effect on you.

When work starts following you home

The consequences rarely remain contained within the meeting room.

You replay conversations on the journey home. You explain the situation repeatedly to your partner, friends or family, searching for something that will make it easier to understand.

You read another leadership book. You listen to podcasts about difficult colleagues. You meditate, journal and analyse your own behaviour.

You begin asking whether you are too sensitive, too direct or insufficiently collaborative.

Before long, you are building a case against yourself.

Your anxiety increases. You dread meetings where she will be present. You may find reasons to avoid them or reach the point where being away from work feels like the only way to feel safe.

The cumulative cost can be considerable. A capable and experienced woman becomes less visible, less vocal and increasingly unhappy. Eventually, she may leave the organisation altogether and her knowledge leaves with her.

What if other people have noticed too?

When you are caught inside this dynamic, it is easy to assume that everyone else accepts the other woman’s version of events.

That assumption deserves to be examined.

What are you imagining your colleagues think about you?

What evidence do you have?

Has anyone else noticed the way your expertise is questioned or the pattern of behaviour developing between you?

A trusted colleague can provide an important reality check. They may have observed more than you realise. They may also help you distinguish between a professional disagreement, a difficult relationship and a sustained pattern of undermining.

This is also where coaching can provide something different from advice about being more assertive.

A confidential coaching space allows you to slow the situation down and examine what has happened to your relationship with your own judgement.

What have you started doing differently?

Where are you seeking permission for decisions you are qualified to make?

What are you withholding?

Whose reaction are you anticipating?

Which parts of yourself have you made smaller in order to remain psychologically safe?

These questions return your attention to the part of the situation over which you have influence: how you understand what is happening and how you choose to respond.

Taking up your space again

Taking up your space does not require a dramatic confrontation.

It may begin with contributing before you have perfected every word. It may mean stating your recommendation without surrounding it with unnecessary caveats. It may involve allowing another person to feel uncomfortable without immediately treating that discomfort as evidence that you have done something wrong.

It may mean documenting a repeated pattern, seeking support or deciding that the organisation’s response tells you something important about whether you can continue to thrive there.

Above all, it means recognising that another woman’s insecurity does not determine the size of your contribution.

Your expertise remains valuable.

Your authority remains legitimate.

Your judgement remains yours to exercise.

You do not have to make yourself smaller to make somebody else feel secure.

Before you question your judgement, question the story you have built around it.