Composure
I lost my composure in a professional setting.
I would do it again.
We are trained before we understand we are being trained.
Say nothing until you can say it perfectly. Thread the needle. Give no one anything to use.
The woman who is visibly angry loses.
There are moments when you are the person in the room with enough standing to act.
I have threaded the needle through every one of them.
The harm continued.
I said what I actually thought instead.
One of them told me I was getting hot.
The woman she was trying to keep from the table was gruff.
My anger was too much. The harm was not.
“We are women. We do not do this to each other.”
“She will be at the next meeting.”
The sector calls this generosity.
It isn’t. It’s using your standing.
The women who need it aren’t waiting for your carefully managed response.
They are waiting for someone to mean it.
Sometimes, composure is just a more elegant form of looking away.
— Keira Haley | keirahaley.com
Trust the reader. Cut until it hurts. Earn the silence.
Managed Composure: when maintaining professionalism replaces necessary action, so the appropriate response becomes a way of not responding at all.