Podcast Ep. 6: How to Be Heard in Meetings
When I ask women lawyers how competent they are on a scale from 1 to 10, they almost always say 9/10. But when I ask them how confident they are, they almost always say 5/10. Which is why too many law firms end up with the most confident people as partners but not necessarily the most competent.
Welcome to The Pathway to Partnership Podcast — where women lawyers come to figure out what success really looks like for them.
I’m Cecilia Poullain — I used to be a finance lawyer. Now I coach women lawyers who want to make partner without losing themselves in the process.
Each week, we’ll explore the three pillars of my Pathway to Partnership programme: clarity, confidence and client development — so you can grow your career with focus, courage and authenticity.
Let’s go.
How to Be Heard in Meetings
If you’re a woman lawyer, I’m guessing you’ve been in meetings in which you have been interrupted, talked over or ignored. Actually, I’m not guessing - I know. Because in 2020, I did a survey of women lawyers in France, the UK and the US, and all the women spontaneously told me that they were so sick of being interrupted in meetings.
And not only interrupted. They were sick of having their ideas stolen or ignored.
The very first Firm Women breakfast that I held in Paris in July 2024 was on exactly this topic. There was such an overwhelming reaction, everybody had so many examples that we didn’t have time to get to solutions, so I organised a second breakfast on the same theme.
Here’s are a couple of examples:
I had a client who was a partner in an international law firm and her ideas were consistently ignored by the partners in her office. Once they were looking for a new courier company and she suggested, quite sensibly, that they use one of the big international firms. Her suggestion was completely ignored and they decided to use a local courier company - only to change back six months later to exactly the same international courier company she had suggested. She was furious.
Here’s another example that comes from a professor of law. She was in a meeting when a colleague referred to “his paper”. She said: “I think that would be “our paper” actually”. In fact, it was entirely her work. And even though other people around the table knew that, she was severely criticised in the meeting for making that remark and nobody stood up for her. After the meeting, some of the people who had witnessed what happened came up to her to say how appalling his behaviour had been.
Women are being interrupted by both men and women - it’s not just a male / female thing. There is a ton of research that shows that women’s voices generally are less recognised in our society. I now notice myself not taking women as seriously as men.
In their book “Women & Leadership”, Julia Gillard, former Australian prime minister, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former minister of foreign affairs of Nigeria, quote Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile: “A male colleague, who was also an advisor to the minister, said to me: “I know that you gave the idea and I just repeated it in another way.” So some men are consciously using the fact that they are listened to more than women and feel quite happy in stealing their ideas. This drives women crazy.
Women are in a double bind. Either they can raise their voices so that they are heard, but then they are criticised as “hysterical”, “acting like a man” or “inauthentic” or they are ignored or have their ideas stolen.
It doesn’t happen in every law firm and in every department, obviously. There are a lot of people out there who are very respectful of everyone’s point of view. But it still happens way too much.
Impact
Incredibly frustrating for the women - especially if they don’t know how to deal with it. But it goes much further than that.
Means women lawyers aren’t seen as partner material - meetings are often where people are judged for their talent.
Means more confident people - often men - are promoted over women, who are often more anxious, less confident but more competent. When I ask women on a scale from 1 to 10 how competent they are, they almost always say 9/10. When I ask them how confident they are, they almost always say 5/10. So it means law firms end up with the most confident people but not the most competent people as partners. You need a certain level of confidence, but there is a level of confidence that is “enough” and a certain level that is “too much”.
Hearing stories are male solicitors who are on massive salaries and they go from firm to firm, saying “this is how much I was on, so I must be worth it” but it turns out they are useless. That’s what happens when you recruit over-confident people.
Means women shut themselves down. Worry about speaking in meetings in case they are criticised or interrupted. A participant in a workshop I did years ago said: “the boss was so rude to me in that meeting that I decided that I would never, ever speak in that meeting again”. What a terrible waste of her talent and ideas and of the talent and ideas of so many women lawyers and women generally.
What to do about it
Get very clear on what you want. How do you know? Listen to your emotions instead of what other people are telling you to do. Then work out how you’re going to get it. Gives you an enormous amount of power and charisma and people will listen to you.
Use meta-communication. Meta-communication means communicating about how we’re communicating, and saying things like: “You probably don’t realise, but that’s the third time you’ve interrupted me in this meeting” or “I’ve noticed that some of us don’t say much in these meetings and others are doing all the talking. I’m getting pretty frustrated about that.”
Very simply saying: “I’m not finished yet”.
Asking other people to support you in the meeting if it’s a meeting in which you’re systematically interrupted - they might say something like: “I don’t think Chris finished what she was saying a moment ago - I’d like to hear more.” It also means helping others get back into the conversation.
Using amplification.
Saying: “I’m so glad you agree with the idea I just expressed.”
Talk about our experiences as women - men often have no idea. Ran a series of workshops recently. In one of the workshops, we mentioned this problem and to his credit, one of the men had checked with women around him whether they were constantly interrupted. He was amazed to find that they all said it was a problem.
Each time it happens, instead of getting down or annoyed about it, use it as practice. Notice what is happening, notice what works and what doesn’t. It’s all just practice.
Encouragingly, some women have told me that when they get senior enough, the problem disappears. They are even more respected because people know how hard it is for women to reach those positions.
This is what we’ve covered in this episode:
This is a major problem - women are systematically being silenced, which is incredibly frustrating. It means they shut themselves down and it means they aren’t reaching their full potential.
The impact in many law firms is that the most confident people, not the most competent people, are being asked to join the partnership.
There are a number of tools to deal with it, including getting clear on what you want and asking for it, getting help from others in the meeting and meta-communication.
Practice:
Do you have a meeting coming up? If you do, and most of us do, you might want to take a moment to think about how you want to turn up in the meeting, what energy you want to bring to it and how you want to be perceived. What technique would you like to practice?
If this is a frequent problem, reach out to me.
Outro
Thank you so much for joining me on The Pathway to Partnership Podcast. I really appreciate it. I hope that today’s episode has given you a realisation that you are not the only one being interrupted or ignored and a few useful techniques to deal with it when it happens.
If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, please share it with a colleague who might find it useful, please leave a review — let’s together help more women make it to partnership and thrive when they get there.
And if you’d like to go deeper, head over to ceciliapoullain.com where you’ll find resources and ways we can work together.
Until next time, remember: you don’t have to do this alone, and you get to define success as a woman lawyer on your own terms.
Thanks for listening.