“I am speaking. I am speaking.”
By: Tommi Laitio
Tags: Leadership Skills, Leadership Development, Esko Kilpi, Kamala Harris, Gender Equality

Kamala Harris demonstrated in the US vice presidential debate how to reclaim your time and still hold on to your values. Learning this skill from Esko Kilpi prevented me from quitting a leadership role early in my career.

Some years back, as I had just been chosen to an executive role for the first time, I was regularly in meetings where certain people talked over me and minimized my perspective. I ran an organization of hundreds of employees. But on a local government scale, it was still a small department and I was more than ten years younger than most of my colleagues. In one of these meetings, one of the attendees actually said out loud: “You should be grateful that we even invite you little guys to join us.”

I stuggled, even suffered, in these meetings. I had started my leadership training in volunteer and youth organizations, where motivation, recognition and encouragement arekey. Most of my professional experience was from cultural, research and social organizations where more than half of the employees were women. But I now I was knocking on the door of the Big Boys´s Club and rules of the game were different.

In many of these meetings some of the participants just totally bulldozed over me, ridiculed my stances, talked over me and started side conversations when I was speaking. More often than not, the chair of the meeting did not intervene. As I pointed out the pattern in a one-on-one with the chair, they told me that these people have always been that way.

I had a flashback from my time chairing The National Union of University Students in Finland in 2013 when it was very common that some middle-aged man in a senior position sat me town and condescendingly said something along these lines:

“Let me tell you how things really are, in the the real world. But hey, don´t worry, you´ll get it when you are older. But hey, it´s great you young people are so active. When I was your age,…”

I noticed I started getting anxious when entering the meetings. I became quiet and stopped joking around and creating a relaxed atmosphere. I was not joining a collegial meeting — no, I was going into battle. I started being cautious with opening my mouth. I started scribbling my remarks on paper before opening my mouth. My mouth dried up before I spoke.

At times I had just had enough. Enough of this shit. I felt I could never really get my point across as I was talked over. My emotions boiled over. My tone became tense and even aggressive. My tone was too harsh and I came across as petty or thin-skinned. Quite often I left the meetings thinking that maybe I am not cut out for this. That maybe you need to be someone older, tougher, and ruder than me to be a leader. Someone who does not give a shit about people´s feelings. I remember very clearly a Friday afternoon. I was totally worn out after one of these meetings. I walked home and thought:“Maybe I should just quit. My team deserves better. What was I thinking?”

Luckily I had agreed to close the week with a chat with Esko Kilpi, a true visionary on the future of work (You can read Esko´s articles here. Esko sadly passed away earlier this year.) Esko was one of those people who was committed to service and helping other people create great things. He had volunteered to meet me now and then and help me in finding my leadership style.

Esko poured me a glass of wine in his beautiful living room. Without him asking a single question, I poured out my imposter syndrome. He allowed me to talk without interruption. After I finished, Esko paused for a moment and said:”The fact that you have these feelings proves you are a leader fit for these times. But I understand that this is eating you from the inside.”

Esko suggested that I try the following:

I say out loud what´s happening:

”You are now speaking over me.” I ask them to change:

”Please do not interrupt me. I am speaking. I am sure the chair let you speak after me.” And the most important and the most difficult:

I remain calm, even friendly.

It sounds too simple to work. But naming the practice has the powerful impact that activates their brain and forces them to take a moral judgement on their own behaviour. I still remember how scary it was to use it for the first time. But it worked. It worked immediately. And as strange as it sounds, I felt that the people who had spoken over me respected me more after these interventions.

Kamala Harris shows in this debate how to do this. It is clear that she has had decades of experience of being belittled and misjudged. Whether you agree on policy with her, I highly recommend watching this. I am nowhere close to her ninja master level on this strategy. But hey, I am not not running to be the vice president of the United States.

I am currently a 40-something white man in an executive director position. When I get excited about something, I do have a bad habit of interrupting people.

So this is an open invitation:

Please use the Kamala Harris Strategy on me if I talk over you.