~950 words · ~5 min read
Finding your voice at work rarely starts with the right words — it starts with the decision to use whatever words you have.
I was in a review meeting with a client, my boss, and one of my direct reports, walking through the client’s travel program. This particular client could be a difficult one — sharp, demanding, not always easy to sit across from.
Partway through the meeting, something shifted. He was still talking about the facts of the client’s program, but his tone changed, and so did his language. He started talking about me instead of to me — as if I weren’t sitting right there.
Talking About Me, Not To Me
I froze. I didn’t know what to do with those first few seconds, so I did nothing.
My boss didn’t freeze. He stopped the conversation cold and defended me, right there in the room.
The Story I Can’t Prove
I’ve turned that moment over more times than I can count in the years since. The story I’ve told myself is that gender and race were part of what shifted in that room that day. I can’t prove it, and I’ve stopped trying to. What I know is what it felt like to sit inside it, and what it cost me to stay quiet.
You Don’t Need Certainty to Act on Your Own Boundary
When the boundary you’re protecting isn’t one you can prove was crossed, here’s where it gets complicated: if I can’t prove what someone meant, do I have the right to respond to how it landed? It feels like you need airtight evidence before you’re allowed to say something.
You don’t. You’re allowed to trust what you felt in the room, name it for yourself, and decide what you’ll do differently next time — regardless of whether you ever get certainty about the other person’s intent. Waiting for proof is just another way of staying quiet.
What This Looks Like in Practice
This isn’t a rare experience. Research from LeanIn.org found that women are twice as likely as men to report being interrupted or spoken over at work — a documented pattern, not an isolated feeling. I coach leaders through some version of this constantly: the meeting where they got talked over, talked about, or quietly written out of their own conversation. The freeze I felt that day isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a common human response to getting blindsided mid-conversation — which is exactly why it helps to decide your response before you need it, instead of trying to invent one in the moment. The 3-Question Reset is a quick way to do that in thirty seconds or less.
Ways to Find Your Voice When a Conversation Goes Sideways
- Name what’s happening, out loud, in the moment. Something as simple as “I want to pause — who is this comment actually about?” invites them to catch it too, instead of putting them on the defensive.
- Trust what you felt, even without certainty about intent. You don’t need to prove someone’s motive to know something crossed a line for you.
- Think back to a time someone crossed a line and you didn’t respond the way you wanted to. Keep that answer ready for next time.
- If someone advocates for you, tell them what it meant. I never told my boss, in so many words, what that moment did for me. Say it — later is still better than never.
- Advocacy can look like leaving the room, not just speaking up in it. I never sat in another meeting with that client. That was still advocacy — just a quieter kind.
Reflections
A few questions worth exploring:
When has the tone of a conversation shifted so fast you didn’t have words ready for it?
Who has stepped in for you the way my boss did for me — and did you ever tell them what it meant?
Where in your own work do you still owe yourself the voice you didn’t use the first time?
Finding the Voice, Even Years Later
I never got a do-over with that client, and I’ve made peace with that. What I got instead was a promise to myself — one I’ve kept far more than I’ve broken since. A conversation can go sideways in a single sentence. What happens next is still yours to decide.
If finding your voice in the moment is something you’re working on, that’s exactly what we build together in coaching. Book a call to talk through it — or take the Positive Positioning Self-Assessment to see where your own patterns are already working for you.
Until next time, — Michele Delgado, Founder Hartmetrics
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