How to Stay Calm and Confident in Difficult Meetings at Work
She Read the Room. Then She Rewrote It. (Part 1 of 3)
There's a phrase that just came to me, and I can't stop thinking about it.
She read the room. Then she rewrote it.
Over the next three weeks I'm going three layers deep on this and the self-skill underneath it, the soft skill that brings it to life, and the actual strategy for making it happen in your real job. Starting today with the part nobody talks about.
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You know that feeling when you walk into a meeting and you can just feel that something is off? The energy is weird. Someone's clearly in a mood. And without even thinking about it you just... adjust. You soften what you were about to say. You decide maybe now isn't the right time for that idea. You shrink a little, not a lot, just enough.
And then you walk out feeling like you left something on the table. Because you did.
Here's what's actually happening in that moment: Your nervous system felt the threat and responded before you even had a chance to think. Which honestly is really smart biology. But, really annoying leadership. 😄
Because your nervous system didn't ask you what YOU wanted to do. It just made the call. And you went along with it.
That's what a Self-Regulation gap actually looks like in real life. Not blowing up at someone. Not crying in a bathroom. Just quietly letting the room decide who you're going to be that day.
And Self-Regulation (real Relf-Regulation) isn't about suppressing how you feel or pretending the tension isn't there. It's about feeling all of it AND still being the one who decides what happens next.
With it? You feel the weird energy and you bring your energy anyway.
You feel the skepticism across the table and you say the thing anyway.
You feel the meeting going sideways and you stay grounded instead of going with it.
Without it? The room wins. Every time.
I want you to think about the last time you walked into something hard and felt yourself shift… Just that quiet little adjustment where you became a slightly different version of yourself because the room called for it.
How long did it take you to come back?
For some women it's an hour. For others it's the whole rest of the day. And for some, and honestly this is what I see most, they've been doing it for so long they don't even know what coming back would feel like anymore.
It’s happened to all of us… It’s just a gap nobody ever helped us close.
She read the room. And then SHE decided what to do about it. Not her nervous system. Her.
That's where it starts. 🌸
Next week: the soft skill that brings this to life, and why emotional intelligence is only half the story.
If you're reading this going "I genuinely don't know what coming back to myself feels like anymore,” that's exactly what we work on together. My 1:1 coaching calendar is open.
xo, Lindsey