One of the most powerful leaders I know is also one of the quietest.
She’s an engineer who has spent her career in rooms full of men, and she has risen through every one of them until she’s running research and development for a global team of two hundred people. She doesn’t do it by being the loudest voice at the table. Her tone is calm. She listens more than she talks. If you don’t know her, you might underestimate her in the first five minutes, and you’d be wrong.
What makes her powerful is that she’s completely clear about what she stands for. Care comes first. You feel it in how she listens, and in the way she treats the person cleaning the office the same as the person running the division.
I saw it most clearly the time she had to lay off part of her team. She flew to Tokyo to do it in person, rather than over a call or a Zoom. She sat down with each of them, told them the truth, and stayed in the discomfort with them instead of hurrying to the other side of it.
The people she had just let go asked her to lunch. Think about that. She had ended their jobs, and they still wanted more time with her. The care she showed them in the hardest moment came right back to her. That’s what real strength looks like, and it has nothing to do with volume.
We tell women a lot of things about their voice at work. Speak up more. Be more assertive. Command the room. Take up space. Almost all of it is really advice about volume, about being louder and claiming more airtime, as if power were a decibel level.
The most powerful communicators I know are rarely the loudest people in the room. They’re the clearest. Clear about what they value. Clear about what they will and won’t stand for. Clear enough that you always know where they stand, whether they raise their voice or barely speak at all.
You don’t have to become louder to become powerful. If you’re someone who listens more than you talk, whose voice is calm, who’s been told more than once to be “more assertive,” you’re not missing anything. The work is getting clear on what you stand for, so that when you do speak, there’s no mistaking what you mean.
That’s a kind of power no one can talk over.
As someone who grew up quite shy, I totally resonate with this.
For so much of my career, I feel like it hurt me to be quieter. The typical advice always left me feeling like I had to say something just to take up air time or be louder or talk over people. Things I never enjoyed doing.
I’ve realized that having a calm demeanor and listening before I speak became superpowers and started leaning into them more. Great example with your friend. She is clearly leading with care in her words!
Your words are full of wisdom Kristine. “Clear enough that you always know where they stand.” That’s the kind of person I want to be around and be myself.