How I got in my own way: The lack of "YES"

We often hear the generic statement about how women have a hard time saying NO and this leads to a potentially negative impact on career.

I disagree.

The crux of the issue is not that we don’t say NO, it is that we don’t say YES to the right, high value opportunities.

I know - this is contentious!

Let me say this up front: I have no data to support this. Believe me, I tried – there isn’t much relevant data out there. With lack of data, I turn to narrative! Conversations and observations over the last decade around my own life & experiences, peers and mentors is the true basis of all statements in this piece!

I’m not fully discounting the necessity to learn to say NO. Early on in my career, my friend Diana and I often found ourselves in large team meetings with 10+ male colleagues. Every time we walked into a meeting, we would joke about who was going to get tagged to “take notes” at the meeting between me and her ?? Over time, I was given the crown of being excellent notetaker (believe me, this was even cited as a strength in my performance review!), and I was na?ve enough to think this was fantastic. In hindsight, we were young, vulnerable, wanting to make an impact and demonstrate value.

However, we should’ve been smarter to stop and say NO to something that continued for over 2 years. Especially in light of the fact that no one else ever had to do this except the 2 women on the team! Sure, I am happy I have a skill that added value to the team, but I cannot possibly remain just that! Think about what happened in that time that I was taking all those wonderful notes: It successfully eliminated my voice from the conversation at meetings! I couldn’t truly add value with my opinion because I was too busy capturing everyone else’s opinions!

As women, we need to get better at saying NO to the (gender conforming) low value work and learn to prioritize high value work. However, what about the big stuff? Should we be saying YES in the places we actually say NO? Have I confused you enough?!

Reflecting on my career, there have been a few instances where I played a role in successfully impeding my own career!

How did I do that?

By imposing the motherhood penalty on myself and saying NO to opportunities that I should’ve jumped up and grabbed. Based on those experiences, here are 2 tangible ways to rethink the decision making process towards opportunities that come your way…..and get out of your own way when it comes to advancing your career!

1. Write down your career goals and ambitions

(and keep recalibrating every year as “life happens”).

I started doing this when I was in high school. I’d put pen to paper and write down what I wanted and formulate a 5-year plan. It was so much easier back then, as all I had to say was “Get into college XYZ” and “Prep for GRE exams to get into an American University”. Easy, streamlined, and probably the exact same goal as the 25 others kids in my class! It was an important skill and I am glad I started practicing this early on. This is how I still handle my life and career. What are my goals for this year as a working professional, mom, wife, individual entity? 5 years? More importantly, what are the intermediate steps that will lead me towards those goals?

 The only time in my life I failed at doing this is in the 2.5 years I struggled with infertility. And in that time, an incredible opportunity came my way to support an operations team for 2 months. The company called these “suitcase assignments” where you travelled Monday-Saturday, spent a couple of days back home and then flew back to the operations site overseas. When I was told about it, I didn’t even stop and consider this for a brief second. I immediately said NO. I was in the process of going through my injections for IVF and figured it’d be too hard to do both. A few years later, I met a colleague who did exactly what I had said no to. She got a similar opportunity to be in Germany on a suitcase assignment and just administered the shots herself.

Was I an idiot to say NO?

Probably not!

Did I let my personal life cloud my judgement of my career?

Probably yes!

I’m not saying we need to always strive to do both, but finding a way to harmonize the two lives is important. I know now that this particular job would have given me a pathway to building credibility and a skill-set that took me much longer to do later in my career. If I had that written set of goals to help me see the big picture, I could’ve easily seen how this opportunity fit as a perfect stepping stone to achieve my goals. However, I believe I let one part of my life take over another and stood in my own way.

Darn! I wish I had that goal list!

 2.    Talk, reach out

Sometimes, we get all caught up in our head and we *think* we can do everything on our own. We absolutely can’t do everything alone. I have moments in my head when I visualize every other woman around me as this Wonder Woman doing it all and berate myself for not being that.…I couldn’t be more far off from the reality and the truth. NO ONE CAN DO THAT on their own! They do it with lots of help and reinforcements.

 A similar opportunity came my way again when my daughter was 1.5 years old. I had to be on turnaround support and away from home for multiple days at a stretch. This time, I did have my goal list (phew!) and could visualize how this opportunity would really set me up on the path I wanted to be on. I talked to my husband about it. We flew in his parents from India to help with childcare as he had some important deadlines around the same time.

 Another critical point in my career when this happened is when the job at Amazon came my way. I was a few months post-partum, exclusively pumping, with a preschooler and infant inside and COVID outside! I had a job that I loved and wasn’t sure if “this was the right time for a move with young kids in the house”. Plus, the job was in Seattle and would involve uprooting our entire family from Houston.

I clearly remember the day my husband said “You know you need to do this, right?”…and that put everything in perspective! I ended up getting the job and my husband worked out an arrangement with his workplace so we could all be in the same city. I will forever be grateful for the incredible forethought he had to be an objective voice of reason.

His first question to me involved my career ambition and not if it made sense for the kids or home.

 If I didn’t have that, my answer would have most certainly been a NO and I wouldn’t even have interviewed!

Don’t give up in those hard decision forks..especially when you are juggling so many things at once. Talk to someone you trust to help bring clarity.

 Get out of your own way!

“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity" - Unknown