Women in Male-Dominated Professions?

I'm not sure if this is something all women do, or if I just have a lack of confidence in my own abilities--or if this is something that I'll slowly grow out of. (This isn't to say I'm a spring chicken; rather, I'm saying that I'm not as young as I used to be nor as old as I hope to one day achieve.)

But I have a constant lack of confidence in my abilities. I don't think that what I'm doing is "good enough"; instead I think what I'm doing is, in fact, barely enough. I've had friends point this out to me. I recently asked a friend about a professor whose course I will be taking over the summer, saying to him that I'm terrified of screwing it up, that I'm really afraid I won't be good enough to do well in the course.

He replied to me, "Whatever academic failings you seem to think you have, you don't. You'll do just fine." Which was a very nice way of him to point out my tremendous lack of confidence.

And then, recently, I was given tremendous compliments by two different people, neither of whom knows the other, but both of whom seem to think well of me. They both admire what I do, and the compliments are those that I can't just shake off as meaningless. I have a lot, a ton of respect for these two people, and all I can do when they express their compliments is panic, worried that I'll disappoint them.

Is this all women? I was recently speaking to Carol, of CarolsLib fame, with whom I'd also had the humor discussion. She said that she always focuses on the negative in her workshop evaluations, that if there is one thing that is negative, she wonders what the problem was. Do men do this? I've got a lot of male friends, and although they have their confidence shaken on a regular basis, it seems as if they started from a high point of confidence, and if it has been shaken, it drops. It seems like women, or at least I, build confidence from the ground up; I sort of feel like I'm working from the base of nothing, and I have to make something out of nothing. (Which sounds negative, I know, but it really does produce good professional results.)

Is this all women who work in male-dominated professions? I'm not sure. It actually may be. Is there an endemic sense in women who work in these professions that screams at them, "I don't belong here." I know that there have been times when I've discussed complex technological issues (often BSD or Linux-related) with people, and it's taken them a few minutes to realize that I really do know what I'm talking about. It's not only men who commit this error, and maybe it's because I use flowery, grammatically-correct language to discuss things, but I do know that there is doubt at first--usually easily dispelled.

And it could just be that, since I grew up in a family where, when I received a 98 on an essay, my mother would ask, "Why wasn't it 100%?" I'm just constantly in search of improvement, of perfection. While it's something that hurt my feelings at the time, I do believe that my mother really improved my job performance and the quality of what I put my mind to.

Where does humor fit into professional behavior?

Over the past few days, I've communicated and worked with a variety of people, each of whom has a different sense of humor. The work I've done with these folks has been serious work; the subject matters we discuss have been important, significant issues; the people's responses and demonstration to humor has been different each time.

I don't know where wit figures into work, but I find it to be interesting. On one project this week, I've been working with the woman who is a little younger than I am, who has a very deadpan demeanor, who told my boss and me the funniest story I've heard in a long time--without cracking a smile.

And then there's the person I find it fun to offset because I think he takes things too seriously though I also think he delights in the silliness. Though what we have been discussing is of great importance, sometimes I find a good opportunity to make a joke--sometimes, it's understood, other times not so much. (Of course, I do have a weird sense of humor--another friend of mine likes to apologize when I make jokes with, "Not everyone 'gets' Ana." Of course, he works for the State senate, so it could be that he has trouble with humor in general.)

Next is the person who gets angry if you laugh at something she says or does; even if it is endearingly funny, she takes it personally if you laugh.

There's the other friend who likes to say that the line is where he knows he needs to step across. Although he's never personally insulting in his humor, he can be quite...graphic...in it.

But how does humor work in the workplace? As a tool, it is useful in meetings to make an audience comfortable; at workshops or conferences--amongst a group of strangers--it helps you get to know other people and vice versa. In blogging online, it keeps your audience interested in what you're discussing, or it keeps your audience from growing too bored. It is helpful when you're trying to understand your professional relations, including what motivates them, what they find important, and where boundaries lie. A lot of the most charismatic people in history demonstrated an appropriate balance between wit and intelligence, between professionalism and levity. In some ways, I'd even argue that good humor should count as highly as a job qualification as, say, the ability to communicate effectively. Because, honestly, I've never worked in a job where I didn't use my sense of humor as a tool toward either cutting to the heart of a situation or understanding the people I was working with--and even toward improving team work and team investment on a project.

Of course, humor is also an adaptive instinct.