How to Be Taken Seriously at Work as a Woman
During last week’s Talk About It Tuesday conversation on Instagram, we discussed what actually gets us taken seriously at work.
Women in all different roles and industries weighed in, from a manufacturing company president to a first-year manager still figuring it out. Here’s the short version: being taken seriously at work isn’t one trick. It’s competence, first. Then it’s a set of small, learnable habits around how you talk, what you share, and how much space you let yourself take up.
Competence is the foundation
Almost every response, in some form, said a version of the same thing: no strategy or mindset shift replaces being good at your job.
One woman put it plainly: “No amount of strategy, podcasts, or self-help will build confidence if the underlying competence isn’t there.” Another said her whole approach comes down to preparation — going into every meeting as ready as she can be, and being just as comfortable saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
This matters because it’s easy to skip straight to the confidence tactics without doing the unglamorous work first. The women who said they get taken seriously weren’t leaning on charisma. They were over-prepared, they knew their numbers, and they’d rather follow up with the right answer later than fake one in the room.
What you say (and how you say it) matters
A handful of women described the exact same self-check: noticing the ways they were quietly shrinking their own voice, and correcting for it.
Specifically:
Saying sorry when nothing’s wrong, just to soften the moment.
Upspeak — ending a statement like it’s a question, which reads as less certain than it is.
Self-deprecating humor, used as a reflex to make yourself smaller before anyone else can.
Over-explaining, adding three sentences of justification to something that stood fine on its own.
More than one woman said her fix for this was the same, almost word for word: notice the habit, then ask, “How would a man say this?” and say it that way instead. Not because men have it figured out, but because they’re far less likely to edit out their authority.
Position yourself to be seen
A few women pushed back gently on the idea that good work speaks for itself. One had started sending a weekly email to her boss outlining what she was working on, what she’d finished, and what was next. Leadership created a new role for her because of it.
Her advice: keep a running log of what you’re doing and share it on a cadence that feels right to you. Not to perform. So that the people who decide what happens next actually have the information they need to decide it.
Be yourself, not a smaller version of someone else
The instinct to act more like the guys came up, and so did the pushback against it. One woman described her first female mentor, who never tried to be anything other than exactly herself. She could de-escalate a tense room in a way that was uniquely hers, precisely because she wasn’t performing masculinity. And by doing that, she gave everyone around her permission to stop performing too.
The quick list, if you need it
Be over-prepared. Every time.
Notice where you’re shrinking your own voice — sorry, upspeak, self-deprecation — and cut it.
Share your wins and progress on a cadence, even if no one asked. Especially if no one asked.
Don’t perform someone else’s version of confidence. Be recognizably, unmistakably you.
Join us over on Instagram on Tuesdays for Talk About It Tuesday — a community conversation hosted in stories.