Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jeanine M. Donohue back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
Recently, I was invited to dinner with a group of highly accomplished and well-respected women general counsel. I was genuinely excited. It was an opportunity to meet women I admired, hear about their experiences, and learn from them.
Before the dinner, I did what many of us do: I researched the other attendees.
As I read their impressive biographies, I noticed something. I was the only attorney attending who had never served as a general counsel.
I registered that fact and went on with my day.
Or at least I thought I did.
That evening, after spending the day at a professional conference that should have reinforced my confidence and reminded me of my own experience and accomplishments, I got ready for dinner. I intended to walk into that private dining room feeling confident, accomplished, and completely comfortable in my own skin.
Then, somewhere between my hotel and the restaurant, the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee called an emergency meeting in my head. (The concept — and its memorable name — originated with Denise Brousseau, founder of WILpower, an exceptional leadership program for women.)
Most of us know that committee in one form or another.
Mine came prepared with an agenda:
You’ve never been a general counsel.
You’re not a partner at your firm.
Never mind that this has been a conscious and intentional career choice. The committee has never been particularly interested in context.
Then came:
These women are more accomplished than you.
They’re smarter than you.
Why would they be interested in anything you have to say?
By the time I reached the restaurant, I had allowed that internal dialogue to become so loud that I nearly walked past the door. I seriously considered returning to my hotel room and ordering room service.
And then something decidedly less inspirational happened.
It was about 90 degrees outside. I was hot. And I knew the restaurant was air-conditioned.
So I opened the door.
The blast of cold air gave me just enough of a reset to quiet the committee and walk inside.
I am very glad I did.
On the other side of that door was an extraordinary group of women who were accomplished, certainly, but also warm, generous, funny and welcoming.
They engaged with me. They listened to me as I listened to them. We talked about our experiences. We laughed. I learned a tremendous amount.
And at some point during the evening, I stopped thinking about whether I belonged in the room.
I simply belonged in the room.
Looking back, that evening reinforced several lessons I want to remember.
1. A Different Resume Is Not A Lesser Resume.
I had focused on one difference between my career and theirs: they had served as general counsel and I had not.
Without realizing it, I had turned a difference into a deficiency.
But there is no single blueprint for a successful career. We make choices based on our goals, priorities, families, opportunities, interests and sometimes simply where life takes us.
An intentional choice does not become less valid because someone else made a different one.
We should be able to admire another person’s accomplishments without using them to diminish our own.
2. Don’t Reject Yourself Before Anyone Else Has The Chance To Accept You.
This may have been my biggest realization.
Nobody at that dinner told me I didn’t belong.
I did.
Nobody suggested that my experience wasn’t valuable.
I did.
Nobody asked why I had been invited.
I did.
I had been invited into the room, yet I nearly made the decision, on everyone else’s behalf, that I wasn’t qualified to enter it.
That is a particularly insidious form of self-doubt: we can exclude ourselves from opportunities before anyone else has even considered excluding us.
3. Confidence Doesn’t Always Come Before Courage.
We often imagine that successful people feel confident before taking the next step. Perhaps sometimes they do.
But sometimes the order is reversed.
Sometimes you walk through the door while you’re still questioning whether you belong on the other side of it.
Courage does not require the absence of doubt. Sometimes courage is simply refusing to let doubt make the decision.
4. Don’t Compare Someone’s Biography To Your Internal Monologue.
Before the dinner, I knew these women’s titles and professional accomplishments.
What I did not know were their disappointments, difficult decisions, career detours, sacrifices, failures, or moments of uncertainty. I was comparing the polished facts of their professional lives with the unfiltered doubts inside my own head.
Those are never equivalent data sets.
A biography tells you what someone has accomplished. It rarely tells you what they had to overcome, or what they questioned about themselves, along the way.
5. Once You’re Comfortable In The Room, Look For The Person Standing Near The Door.
This may be the most important lesson.
At some point in our careers, each of us becomes comfortable in rooms that once intimidated us.
When that happens, we have an opportunity, and perhaps an obligation, to make the room a little easier for the next person to enter.
Introduce yourself.
Invite someone into the conversation.
Ask a question and genuinely listen to the answer.
Make room at the table.
The women at that dinner had no idea about the internal debate I had been having just minutes earlier. They didn’t know that the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee was still lurking somewhere stage left in my brain.
But through simple acts of warmth, curiosity and inclusion, they silenced it far more effectively than any pep talk I could have given myself.
And that reminded me that we may never know how much a small act of professional generosity matters to someone else.
6. You Were Invited For A Reason.
Perhaps the simplest lesson was the one I almost missed entirely.
I had been invited.
Someone else already believed there was a reason for me to be in that room. My job wasn’t to relitigate the invitation. My job was to show up, participate, listen, contribute and learn.
The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee probably isn’t going anywhere. Mine seems to have appointed itself to a lifetime term.
But I’ve realized that I don’t actually need to eliminate it.
I just don’t have to give it a vote.
So the next time it reminds me that someone else is more accomplished, more credentialed, more important, or more deserving of a seat at the table, I’ll remember that dinner.
Sometimes the most important professional decision we make is simply to open the door and walk into the room.
Although I have also learned that air conditioning helps.
Jeanine M. Donohue is a member of Buchalter’s Litigation Practice Group and Wineries, Vineyards and Breweries Practice Group. She practices in the firm’s St. Helena and San Francisco offices. With over 30 years of experience, Jeanine is a big picture strategist who quickly appreciates the 30,000 foot major issues, while also being attentive to the nuances and important details of each matter she handles. Jeanine maintains a broad litigation practice that includes insurance recovery, commercial, real estate and products liability.
The post The Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee appeared first on Above the Law.
Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jeanine M. Donohue back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
Recently, I was invited to dinner with a group of highly accomplished and well-respected women general counsel. I was genuinely excited. It was an opportunity to meet women I admired, hear about their experiences, and learn from them.
Before the dinner, I did what many of us do: I researched the other attendees.
As I read their impressive biographies, I noticed something. I was the only attorney attending who had never served as a general counsel.
I registered that fact and went on with my day.
Or at least I thought I did.
That evening, after spending the day at a professional conference that should have reinforced my confidence and reminded me of my own experience and accomplishments, I got ready for dinner. I intended to walk into that private dining room feeling confident, accomplished, and completely comfortable in my own skin.
Then, somewhere between my hotel and the restaurant, the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee called an emergency meeting in my head. (The concept — and its memorable name — originated with Denise Brousseau, founder of WILpower, an exceptional leadership program for women.)
Most of us know that committee in one form or another.
Mine came prepared with an agenda:
You’ve never been a general counsel.
You’re not a partner at your firm.
Never mind that this has been a conscious and intentional career choice. The committee has never been particularly interested in context.
Then came:
These women are more accomplished than you.
They’re smarter than you.
Why would they be interested in anything you have to say?
By the time I reached the restaurant, I had allowed that internal dialogue to become so loud that I nearly walked past the door. I seriously considered returning to my hotel room and ordering room service.
And then something decidedly less inspirational happened.
It was about 90 degrees outside. I was hot. And I knew the restaurant was air-conditioned.
So I opened the door.
The blast of cold air gave me just enough of a reset to quiet the committee and walk inside.
I am very glad I did.
On the other side of that door was an extraordinary group of women who were accomplished, certainly, but also warm, generous, funny and welcoming.
They engaged with me. They listened to me as I listened to them. We talked about our experiences. We laughed. I learned a tremendous amount.
And at some point during the evening, I stopped thinking about whether I belonged in the room.
I simply belonged in the room.
Looking back, that evening reinforced several lessons I want to remember.
1. A Different Resume Is Not A Lesser Resume.
I had focused on one difference between my career and theirs: they had served as general counsel and I had not.
Without realizing it, I had turned a difference into a deficiency.
But there is no single blueprint for a successful career. We make choices based on our goals, priorities, families, opportunities, interests and sometimes simply where life takes us.
An intentional choice does not become less valid because someone else made a different one.
We should be able to admire another person’s accomplishments without using them to diminish our own.
2. Don’t Reject Yourself Before Anyone Else Has The Chance To Accept You.
This may have been my biggest realization.
Nobody at that dinner told me I didn’t belong.
I did.
Nobody suggested that my experience wasn’t valuable.
I did.
Nobody asked why I had been invited.
I did.
I had been invited into the room, yet I nearly made the decision, on everyone else’s behalf, that I wasn’t qualified to enter it.
That is a particularly insidious form of self-doubt: we can exclude ourselves from opportunities before anyone else has even considered excluding us.
3. Confidence Doesn’t Always Come Before Courage.
We often imagine that successful people feel confident before taking the next step. Perhaps sometimes they do.
But sometimes the order is reversed.
Sometimes you walk through the door while you’re still questioning whether you belong on the other side of it.
Courage does not require the absence of doubt. Sometimes courage is simply refusing to let doubt make the decision.
4. Don’t Compare Someone’s Biography To Your Internal Monologue.
Before the dinner, I knew these women’s titles and professional accomplishments.
What I did not know were their disappointments, difficult decisions, career detours, sacrifices, failures, or moments of uncertainty. I was comparing the polished facts of their professional lives with the unfiltered doubts inside my own head.
Those are never equivalent data sets.
A biography tells you what someone has accomplished. It rarely tells you what they had to overcome, or what they questioned about themselves, along the way.
5. Once You’re Comfortable In The Room, Look For The Person Standing Near The Door.
This may be the most important lesson.
At some point in our careers, each of us becomes comfortable in rooms that once intimidated us.
When that happens, we have an opportunity, and perhaps an obligation, to make the room a little easier for the next person to enter.
Introduce yourself.
Invite someone into the conversation.
Ask a question and genuinely listen to the answer.
Make room at the table.
The women at that dinner had no idea about the internal debate I had been having just minutes earlier. They didn’t know that the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee was still lurking somewhere stage left in my brain.
But through simple acts of warmth, curiosity and inclusion, they silenced it far more effectively than any pep talk I could have given myself.
And that reminded me that we may never know how much a small act of professional generosity matters to someone else.
6. You Were Invited For A Reason.
Perhaps the simplest lesson was the one I almost missed entirely.
I had been invited.
Someone else already believed there was a reason for me to be in that room. My job wasn’t to relitigate the invitation. My job was to show up, participate, listen, contribute and learn.
The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee probably isn’t going anywhere. Mine seems to have appointed itself to a lifetime term.
But I’ve realized that I don’t actually need to eliminate it.
I just don’t have to give it a vote.
So the next time it reminds me that someone else is more accomplished, more credentialed, more important, or more deserving of a seat at the table, I’ll remember that dinner.
Sometimes the most important professional decision we make is simply to open the door and walk into the room.
Although I have also learned that air conditioning helps.
Jeanine M. Donohue is a member of Buchalter’s Litigation Practice Group and Wineries, Vineyards and Breweries Practice Group. She practices in the firm’s St. Helena and San Francisco offices. With over 30 years of experience, Jeanine is a big picture strategist who quickly appreciates the 30,000 foot major issues, while also being attentive to the nuances and important details of each matter she handles. Jeanine maintains a broad litigation practice that includes insurance recovery, commercial, real estate and products liability.
The post The Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee appeared first on Above the Law.
