So I took part in an inter-university commercial awareness competition recently. We were in small teams, and my teammate and I had to present back to the panel on a case study. Our presentation had multiple sections which we split amongst ourselves. They start first, I go next- all good so far. When the last section comes about they go way over the time limit of 1 min (which they had told me to strictly stick to in the preparation breakout room) and I am left with less than 30 seconds for my last section. I can only outline what I was going to talk about in a sentence before being cut off. Then there are questions from the panel- and I don't get to say a single word. They take up all the questions, including the questions regarding my part of the presentation. I unmuted myself multiple times but they took up the question nonetheless and as soon as they were done the panel member asking would say thank you and move on.
I am not shy or introverted. I am a confident speaker who has presented in high profile conferences and forums. I am also the "mother" of the group in group projects, always making sure people contribute and that work is allocated fairly- I don't try to make myself stand out over the rest of my team.
This experience made me feel so defeated, patronised, and small. The only positive part of it is that the outcome (which we found out in a few days) is assessed on a team level, and I must have done something right because I've had legal recruiters of the sponsoring firms reach out via LinkedIn.
Beside the rant, I guess the question here is: have you ever had to deal with difficult and "macho" team members like that, and how did you cope?
My reply to your post is fairly long but I promise it has a point- please bear with me!
I relate with this to such a large extent- I've been in a similar position once before in my life and I learnt some really valuable lessons from it that I carry with myself to this date.
I was part of this competition once where we had to pitch an idea in teams. The teams had been formed many weeks in advance, so we all knew each other and had met on a few occasions- I picked up no red flags regarding how everyone else was behaving with me.
Cut to the day of the competition, we're given a couple hours to prepare and everything gets turned on its head. I could sense that deliberate attempts to either ignore or silence me were being made by my teammates and it was incredibly unnerving.
I'm generally the one in teams who likes to put forward ideas, collaborate with others in execution or take the lead, and I now found myself being reduced to a mere spectator because nothing I said or did was being entertained by my teammates.
An hour in, I managed to get a word in edgewise about the direction of our pitch but it was taken on in its entirety with neither any credit or acknowledgement given to me and my team simply moved on. Witnessing this, I realised that the only thing I really could do was listen, observe, take notes and and see if any of my efforts would be useful later on in the presentation. Although this was a new role for me in a teamwork context and made me feel uncomfortable at first, I found solace in having found at least something to do.
Given everybody's attitude towards me the whole day, I was unsurprisingly given the role of introducing our team (not the pitch, mind you), which I finished in less than 30 seconds and then stood watching while the rest of the team divided the remaining 9.5 minutes between them.
Once the presentation finished, some unexpected things happened. We were asked a few questions by a panel of judges that my team was rather unprepared to answer. You see, in focusing on excluding me and rushing to finish the presentation, the team had had forgotten to think about questions that we may be asked about budgets, organisation, execution etc.
Since I had done nothing but observe the team and think about our pitch for the last few hours, I found myself being able to answer the panel's questions with confidence and forethought, and when my team picked up on this, they stood watching in silence and inevitably let me take the lead. The day ended with us winning the competition and the judges personally reaching out to me later on to commend me on my ability to take on challenging questions. Till date, I am still in touch with the judges and am remembered for my performance in that competition, which is something that I
never would've imagined happening at the beginning of it.
I took a few things away from this experience that I hope will help you reconcile with your negative experience-
- Being able to detach oneself from the role you expect to adopt in a team can help you flourish in unexpected ways.
- If your teammates are being exclusionary, don't wait for them to assign something to you and find something to do regardless.
- It is difficult to confront 'macho' team members while you're working on a group project, especially if they outnumber you/have ganged up on you, so you need to find unique ways to make yourself engaged in the project regardless of the attempts your teammates make to exclude you.
- Understand what really matters- in my case, it was the presentation and conversation with the judges that really mattered at the end of the day, and I think that maybe this was something I considered subconsciously. It seems like you did too, given that you are currently being heavily recruited!
I hope this helps- wishing you the very best!
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