The Woman in the Room

Executive business coach and Local Women columnist Joanna Denton reflects on the self-doubt many capable women still carry after difficult moments in professional rooms — and why those moments were never really about them.

You know the moment.

You’re standing there, top of your field, name on the programme, a career’s worth of expertise in the room with you.

And someone gets your name wrong.

Or talks over you.

Or turns to the person next to you to explain something you could have explained better, faster, and with considerably more authority.

Maybe you say something. Maybe you push back, calmly and clearly, and hold your ground with more grace than the situation deserved.

Maybe you crack a well-timed line that gets a laugh and moves things on.

Maybe you absorb it quietly, professionally, with a composure that looks, from the outside, remarkably like it didn’t bother you at all.

There is no right or wrong answer here.

However you handled it, you handled it.

And then you go home.

And the tape starts running.

Should I have said something? Did I say too much?

Was I too direct, too sharp, not sharp enough?

Did I make it worse by letting it go? Did I make it worse by calling it out?

You replay the room, the moment, your own response, and somewhere in that replay you start to wonder whether the problem was actually you.

That is the part I want to talk about.

Because here is what I know about the women I work with. Senior leaders, recognised experts, the person everyone else in the organisation turns to when things get hard. Capable beyond question.

And still, in certain rooms, running this quiet internal interrogation afterwards.

Editing the opinion they did offer, wondering if they should have offered it differently. Going over the moment they pushed back and asking themselves if they pushed too hard. Replaying the moment they stayed quiet and asking themselves why they didn’t speak up.

Trying to work out, for the hundredth time, whether they got it right.

It’s knackering. And it makes complete sense. Because you’ve spent a career in rooms where the margin for error felt smaller for you than for the person standing next to you.

Where being too much or too little or too something had consequences that taught you to monitor yourself carefully.

That internal check-in didn’t come from nowhere. You learned it because at some point it kept you safe, kept the peace, kept the room comfortable for everyone else.

But here is the thing I want you to hear.

Those moments were never about you.

Not one of them.

The wrong name, the talking over.

The slide being changed behind you while you were mid-sentence in front of sixty people — yes, that did happen, fifteen years ago, when my colleague was controlling my slides and on his mission to make me look stupid.

The offhand comment that you’re still not sure was meant to sting or was just an example of being cackhanded — yes, that did happen, last Saturday night when I was out at a dinner with colleagues.

They say nothing about your credibility.

They say nothing about your expertise.

They say nothing about whether you belong there.

They only ever said something about the person who couldn’t see you properly.

You were the most credible person in that room. You probably knew it. Your colleagues probably knew it. The only person who didn’t register it was the one who got your name wrong, or talked over you, or needed to destabilise you because your competence made them uncomfortable.

So the question isn’t whether you handled it the right way. There is no right or wrong way, and any woman who handled a moment like that with any degree of grace, whether she pushed back or held her ground quietly or cracked a joke that landed, handled it well.

The question is what you do with it afterwards. Whether you let it mean something about you that it was never yours to carry.

Because the shift isn’t in how you respond in the room. The shift is in what you believe about yourself after you leave it.

You deserved to be seen properly in that room. Not because you proved yourself. Not because you performed the right version of competence. Simply because you were there, and you were extraordinary, and that should have been enough.

It was always enough.

The room just wasn’t brave enough to see it.

JD Speaking and Strategy Ltd

Address: 30 Bachelors Walk, Lisburn, BT28 1XN
Tel: +44 (0)7795085297
Email: joanna@joannadenton.com
Website: www.joannadenton.com