Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong by Jessica Bacal

Author:Jessica Bacal [Bacal, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Embrace challenges; usually, people don’t expect you to do something perfectly right away.

I loved my new job because it was rewarding to give employees a voice; interestingly, I succeeded because of the valuable skills I’d learned at social work school. As I led focus groups and talked with managers at companies that were trying to create better work environments, I listened, read body language, and facilitated groups in an inclusive way. It just reinforced what I’d known all along—I’d been in the right program but with the wrong focus for me.

In 2006, I got married and my husband and I moved to Washington, DC. With three years of consulting behind me, I was able to find work at a similar firm, only now I was expected to present at conferences and to publish in magazines and journals that potential clients might read. During my first few public speaking stints, my knees were knocking and I forgot parts of my speech, but I faced my fear and it got easier over time. It was the same with writing and pitching articles to magazines; the first pieces I wrote were far from perfect. But each of these risks, whether small or more substantial, built my confidence. I became so emboldened that I pitched something to the Wall Street Journal—which felt like a big risk!—and, to my delight, they published it. When you have wins like that, you start to question what you’ve been doing your whole life—why have you been undermining yourself, insisting on perfection, and analyzing things to death before you act?

I started thinking about applying to business school so that I’d be able to speak the same language as people at these companies where I was working. As I applied for MBA programs, the familiar chants of self-doubt played in my head: What if you fail? You don’t have the math skills or the financial acumen. You didn’t major in anything even related to business. But I was accepted to Johns Hopkins and once I got there, I knew that I was going to drive this thing until the wheels fell off, to take it as far as it could go. There was no holding back now, no voice of doubt that could stop me.

And that relinquishing of fear was the most important moment of growth for me. I became unafraid to ask for what I wanted and to make bold suggestions. Even when I thought my professor might laugh in my face, I told her my craziest idea: Because senior-level executive women were like mythical creatures to me—I didn’t know any, despite working with dozens of corporations—I wanted to find them and ask what advice they would give to a woman like me who was at the beginning of her career. I thought I’d do some interviews and put them into a book for one of my projects.

My professor didn’t laugh—quite the opposite. She told me to go for it, and she said to think about my “dream team,” the women I didn’t even think I could get.

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