Yes, it’s humbling to see all the things we can do, say or wear in order to display competency, hide insecurity and be taken seriously.
I don’t believe that a French accent is an asset of credibility – it’s a joke! If I take myself too seriously, you won’t take me seriously at all…
But I do believe that writing silly and cartoonish blogs is important for me to be taken seriously… Weird, no?
From time to time, if I feel a tension in my work around being taken seriously by others, one of my strategies is to wear a dark suit and high heels.
The issue isn’t so much what I wear, but how, if I feel insecure – even slightly- I can become absorbed by the fear of what others think of me. So absorbed in my head that I can actually forget to be there for others. In other words, to take them seriously too.
As usual, the recipe is very simple, even though it is hard to apply:
To get what we want, we have to give it first.
PS: I’d like to share this short video of a woman that – I confess – I discovered only last week. Wangari Maatai has beautifully demonstrated what women can do, in a country that traditionally didn’t take them seriously. A lot of women have probably experienced a residue of this patriarchal tendency… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GX6JktJZg
Reflections: Do you have tension, sometimes, around being taken seriously? In which circumstances? With whom? What do you do to cope with your tensions?
I feel this acutely with my parents and their peers who immigrated to the US. When they get together, I still sit at the “kids table” even though I am 41, married with three children, and have a good career. I do not have a technical grasp on my parents’ native language which causes me to often withdraw from the conversation OR I tell the two to three jokes that I have told a million times. I have been meaning to study it for some time now but just cannot find the time…
Hey Bill, thanks for sharing your experience! Being taken seriously in our own family, by our own parents or siblings… that’s also quite a subject to study!