Last week a friend called me completely freaked out about a short notice presentation she has to give. Her topic is on an innovation idea she’s been promoting to add protein to diets in developing countries. But without much support to date, she hasn’t fully developed her idea. This presentation is her first major recognition and opportunity to implement her idea. 
As she talked she didn’t sound like herself. She was feeling intense pressure to complete months of work on how to implement her idea in the two weeks prior to her talk. To make matters worse, she didn’t have any details on the environment her audience lives in. So even if she came up with an implementation plan, she didn’t know if it was even feasible in their environment. She had a lot of questions and even more anxiety from not having any answers.
After listening to her for a few minutes it was clear to me that her perspective was off. She was caught up in the idea that as “the expert” she had to stand up in front of her audience with a scripted presentation detailing the step by step instructions on how to implement her idea. What sounded odd is that she expected to deliver a one-directional presentation. She will talk and they will listen. She will tell them what to do and they will carry her instructions back to their villages to implement. It sounded robotic and impersonal which isn’t her personality at all. She likes to engage and interact with people.
Before I knew what I was saying, I blurted out “Stop thinking like a man. You don’t have to have all the answers!”
She stopped talking for a moment, took a big sigh of relief and say “Thank you!”
She then told me she had been talking to her husband and listening to his advice on how to deliver the perfect Power Point presentation. I wasn’t surprised. She then told me about the other presenters who were all men and the topics they were presenting through their Power Point presentations. Her gut was telling her that Power Point was the wrong way to educate the village representatives.
I told her given where she is in developing her idea, she needed a different approach. She should present what she knows then engage her audience to learn about their environment. Together they will develop the steps on how to implement her idea in their villages based on their specific conditions.
Over the next week, she completely changed how she will deliver her presentation. She is doing it in a manner she is comfortable with and allows her to interact with her audience. Instead of feeling disconnected from her audience, she will work with them and amongst them. The group that is sponsoring her may be a little surprised by her format until they see the difference in the response she receives.
What I did was simply reinforce what she already knew – people learn through interaction, not by being lectured to. Her goal isn’t to impress the audience with how much she knows so they marvel at her intelligence. Her goal is to teach them some principles that they can then apply in a variety of environments in order to solve an important problem. This method requires them to think.
One of my greatest pet peeves about the male-dominated workplace is that it doesn’t encourage people to think. Instead, someone from on high passes down procedures and processes they expect everyone else to blindly follow. But our work environments aren’t uniform and static so passed down procedures don’t always work. They need to be modified. Who does this? In the case of my friend, she will be thousands of miles away. It will be up to her audience to figure out their own solutions after she leaves.
When I teach people new procedures I like to play dumb. I don’t lay out the process and say “Follow this.” Instead I ask questions and guide their thinking so they develop the process. My goal isn’t just to get their buy-in, it is to give them permission to think and solve problems on their own. As a manager, I don’t want to nor do I have the time to solve every procedural problem. My staff has to solve problems on their own.
Too often women are criticized for not having the confidence to direct others on what to do and not having all the answers. This is the trap my friend was falling into after talking to her husband and listening to what all the other presenters were planning. It was stressing her out and making her feel unqualified. But not having all the answers is a good thing. Our humility and unanswered questions allows others to step forward with their ideas. When the group’s collective knowledge is used, we develop better solutions.
As women, our strength doesn’t come from ignoring what we don’t know so we can impress others with our expertise. It comes from voicing all of our concerns and questions and leading the group to discovering the best answers.
Empowered Women Encourage Others to Think and Voice Their Ideas
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