Thank you. My friend and boss’s boss was the only female leader in my part of the company, and she recently passed away from cancer. It’s been hard missing my mentor on top of dealing with this.

Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. That sounds really rough. I’d feel super lost too if someone so important was no longer around.

I really appreciate the rest of your advice. I don’t think my softening behaviors sabotage me, in fact it’s when I forget them to focus on the problem that I get in trouble. But maybe I should think more about that.

It’s a difficult line to walk. To these people if you’re too direct you become the ‘bossy removed’. Too soft and they push you over. Learning to soften language in ways which don’t water down the message but make it less attackable - ‘I think that we should’ vs. ‘we should’ is essentially the same message, but the ‘I think’ preface makes it softer and less opportune to attack (it’s just your opinion, rather than a statement of fact, even if both statements are functionally the same).

To be clear, I’m obviously not you and I’m not around for your discussions nor do I really know what you mean when you say ‘self-deprecating’, but I just want to make sure you’re aware that these kinds of people will absolutely use some self-deprecating behavior against you. If you joke that you’re incompetent, they will use it to claim that you are, in fact, incompetent. Anyhow, you’re smart and hopefully you can can sift through the advice I’m trying to leave here to find the most useful information for what you’re going through.