A blessing and a curse

by Adwoa | Jan 28, 2024 | Hardware & Networking

I was working at large enterprise IT as the only female on the team. I was the newest and youngest member of the team. I formed great friendships with everyone and everyone was nice enough to lend a helping hand whenever I had any questions. One day my manager, who was also female , called me in for a meeting. She informed me that there were some rumours questioning if I was in a relationship with one of my close colleagues (who was older than me and married with children). I was FURIOUS and deeply hurt. I asked if these rumours were from people on our team or from others in the company. I had assumed that because I had such a good relationship with everyone on our team they knew my character and knew there was obviously nothing happening apart from a good friendship. My manager wouldn’t tell me where the rumours were coming from but gave me a life lesson about how as a female in a male dominant industry, I will always be an easy target. She gave me an example of herself and said she goes out for runs with a male person on our team as they’ve been friends for years, but she doesn’t advertise it because she knows it will lead to assumptions. She said, like me , our open and cheerful personalities…which enabled the both of us to form close friendships and win people over, is also the same reason people will point to us and interpret it as “flirtatious” behaviour, which has apparently happened to her in her career as well.

Needless to say I definitely dialed back my personality and started distancing myself more from team members as I didn’t know who I could trust anymore. I found it more difficult to interact with the team and enjoy my time spent around the office.

Diminishment

by Adwoa | Dec 20, 2023 | Hardware & Networking

My boss and myself

I commenced in my role with significant access to my boss, with, at a minimum, weekly one-on-one meetings.
As time went on, the time dedicated to those meetings was reduced or the meeting itself was cancelled in its entirety.

Weeks could go by and I was no longer provided with a vehicle to provide important updates about the team/our work, to obtain guidance on critical decisions or to receive information that would inform what and how I/the team fulfilled its responsibilities.

I commit without fail to my one-on-one and team meetings. There is devoted time in the agenda for sharing, Q&A, updates (by everyone) and “unstructured” discussion.
I consciously listen, I ask questions, I follow-up, I acknowledge, I reward, I offer feedback and guidance.

I lost my voice and ended up believing that I had nothing important to say or to contribute to the organization. I left the company after a very short tenure.