What If You're Not Naturally Thick-Skinned?
How to become more resilient and hold your ground?
👋 Hi, it’s Dipti , and I’m a leadership coach.
Each week, I write about a personal development story, leadership, career growth, or navigating change as an ambitious professional.
This past week I was reflecting on a conversation I had with a senior product leader. She shared “I get feedback that I need to have a thicker skin and be a bit more aggressive”. Reminded me of my younger self.
To be thick-skinned is to not be bothered by criticism and rejection. Standing your ground, and also being mentally tough.
“You need to grow a thicker skin”, a consulting client told me in my early career as I shared that the response rate of their member organizations was low and we were coming up against the original deadline. I was only two years into my career, and was managing a large data analytics project.
The project involved financial survey data collection for over 100+ member organizations for that client. I was responsible for designing the survey, managing the communication and analyzing the data. Think Gartner style data report, but at a lower level.
When some of these organizations asked for an extension on the deadline, with weak excuses, I naively agreed. I was unsure how to push back. Since those early days, I’ve come a long way.
I’ve always had a natural ability to connect with people and a strong sense of emotional intelligence. It took me a while to say that without feeling like I was bragging, but I’ve learned to own my strengths.
Probably one of the many reasons I coach on owning your strengths to lead. And this was likely another reason I did really well in my product role with customers and different cross-functional teams. Combine that with an attitude for getting great outcomes for the organization, got me recognized as a leader.
Developing a “thicker skin” has been a journey. What that means is that often I would take things too personally, and I wouldn’t push back enough. I wasn’t aggressive enough to stand my ground. Even worse, I wouldn’t always ask for what I needed from strong personalities - the types that make you feel small.
Years later I had learnt how to navigate skillfully through many of these tricky and challenging situations. I was leading teams, negotiating with tough clients, and had learnt to stand my ground. I was comfortable pushing back on the sales teams or the operations teams when I felt their requests were coming in the way of the highest priorities.
I learnt to pick the right battles, and I learnt to fight better. This isn’t in my nature, but I learnt to be good at these skills through experience, which helped me grow in my career. And with growth comes opportunities.
This brings me back to the conversation with the senior product leader.
“What does being aggressive mean to you”, I asked. For her it meant holding people accountable and not letting them take her for granted. She is a highly intelligent person, excellent at her work, kind (I know because of how she refers to her teams in our conversations) and soft spoken.
Often people like her are usually hard on themselves and don’t need anyone else to be their critic. They have their own voice in the head that is their own biggest critic.
So, how do you start to tackle these issues and develop your mental strength? Here are few ideas that have helped me get through tricky situations:
Self-Aware: Self-awareness begins with noticing the voice in your head, that inner critic shaping your responses. Just recognizing it exists is an insight.
That voice although well meaning can make things harder. It is sometimes your own worst critic, and will make you give in.
It will often be advocating for the other side more than it will be for you.
Saying No: Pay attention to how you say no. Practice saying no kindly. Be thoughtful in your response, and even offer alternative solutions if it makes sense in the scenario. But you’ve got to start saying no, so you can say yes to things that matter to you.
Clarity and Confidence: We underestimate the power to effectively communicating, with clarity and confidence.
As a person who wants to be visible, recognized for their work, and open to receiving new opportunities, you have to learn to communicate clearly and with confidence.
As unfair as it is, if you’re soft spoken, the odds are not on your side to be taken seriously. You have to work to be heard.
Accountability: A key to successful outcomes of working in teams, is holding your teammates accountable. Have the tough conversations. And learning to have those hard conversations early on is a leading indicator to your future success.
Not taking it personally: We’ve all heard this advice, and it seems like such a Zen thing, but can we mortal humans learn this skill. It is possible.
Separate yourself from the situation. It’s rarely about you.
Look for the learning or zoom out and look at the big picture.
Final Thoughts:
I am still a work in progress. I feel like I have traded those known work situations to the next level of ambiguous ones in my career 2.0.
So the next time you’re facing a tough situation about holding your ground or having a hard time turning down a request, or figuring out how to push back on a ridiculous ask and timeline:
Start with your own self-awareness. Are you being harder on yourself than you need to be? Is your own voice of judgement making you give in?
Intentionally and kindly say no.
Speak with clarity and confidence on making your case and holding people accountable.
And lastly - don’t take things personally.
The outcome may still not be the one you want, but you will walk away knowing you stood up for yourself with clarity and intention. That’s growth.
Practice this often, because without action its just ideas. Over time you will notice a shift, not just in how you show up, but in how others experience your strength and presence.
P.S. If you’re an ambitious leader and curious to know how I can help in your next chapter of growth - connect with me