This is from our MEN issue, published in the SPNSTER newsletter.
It was 4:39 PM on a Friday, I was starting to wrap up my to-dos when I got an email from a male director-level coworker.
“Hey Nicole, new timeline for that email push, it goes out tonight!”
After rushing to produce all the copy, build the format of the email, combining all the images, creating the A/B test, my male coworker gave it a quick check and I sent it to the director back.
“Great work on this, Kevin*!” was the email response we got back. This director-level guy had come to ME for help, and even though I did that majority of the work it was Kevin’s work that was worth congratulating. It felt like a total dismissal of my contribution to a late-Friday ask.
Kevin’s response cooled me down though, “Hey, actually, you should send your thanks to Nicole. She did all the great work on this one.”
If I responded and stood up for myself to get credit where it was due, it would have seemed snarky and aggressive. In this simple acting of pointing out my work, and calling out the other to recognize it, Kevin gave me the floor and politely pointed out my contributions. And it stuck with me.
We live in man’s world, really. And until we can have a matriarchy 😉 we need to rely on our allies to help lift us up.
*Names have been changed to protect identities 😉
