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When I finally got a job in a newsroom in New York City my confidence was at rock bottom. The Confidence Code states that men are more confident than women even when they are less qualified or less talented than them, that they speak up for themselves more often and that they demand and often receive higher wages for the same.

I can relate to that and I’m sure many minorities can as well.

In my first job in a newsroom, the young people, most of them white, carried themselves with a confidence and a sense of entitlement that I and the few minorities there didn’t have.

And while they certainly weren’t more talented or hard-working as the blacks and Hispanics in the newsroom, they very often got promoted faster and were paid more than us.

Luckily for those of us who struggled through, a new woman news director came in and corrected the situation immediately.

No. We weren’t crazy, lazy or complainers.

We were just victims of entitlement and bigotry.

Soon after, we became more confident in our work and began to perform even better than we were before.

That was 20 years and six jobs ago, yet as I read through that book it was like it was yesterday.

Funny thing is that all of those unfair experiences motivated me.

And more often than not the people who helped me the most professionally were women who clearly in my humble opinion and experience, the more evolved of the sexes.

 

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DON LEMON: “The Confidence Code”  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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