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My mother’s positivity has instilled itself in me. When I was a teenager, my parents took my sister and I on backpacking canoe trips into the Adirondack Mountains. It wasn’t something we did often, and it was hard to carry the heavy canoe. My mother and my father struggled to carry the canoe up the hill, especially on steep, weedy trails. Every time we put the canoe down for a break, my mother would shake her head, smile, laugh a little, and keep going until the canoe was in the water again.
That’s how I face challenges today, but growing up I didn’t always appreciate my mother’s “always optimistic” attitude. I wanted to be a successful leader, and I knew that to be a leader, especially as a woman, I needed to be taken seriously.
I never really placed much importance on laughing or smiling, but my mother passed those traits on to me without me even intending to.
I was worried that if I laughed too much, my other skills would go unnoticed.
“Smiling well” is not something you can put on a resume, and I long downplayed its value, even as I continued to smile and laugh my way through college, law school, and multinational law firms.
The first time I realized the power of smiling in the workplace was when my business professor, a sophomore in college, told me, “I’m so grateful that you always come to class with a smile on your face.” At the time, I would never have described myself as “happy.” But he was right. I smiled and laughed a lot.
But more than any compliments, my tendency to smile often led others to overlook or downplay my other qualities.
When I was offered a job at a prestigious law firm, my then-boyfriend said, “You have a beautiful smile, so of course they hired you.” He didn’t mention my other qualifications, such as the fact that I graduated with honors. Not that he graduated from Georgetown or had top grades at Columbia Law School. No, it was just about smiling, and he embodied the saying I had heard from the larger culture: “Don’t smile.” Too Spend too little and other skills and talents will go unnoticed.
I learned that smiling is an underrated leadership superpower.
Staying calm amid high stakes and tight deadlines was a key skill while working in corporate law, but it wasn’t until a senior partner told me that my smile put him and his clients at ease that I realised my ability to stay calm came from my mother’s determination to smile and maintain a positive attitude in the face of adversity.
Whether I was making a presentation to the Department of Justice, managing a team of over 100 lawyers, or responding to an urgent client request, smiling helped me do my job more effectively.
Not only did my positive energy calm others, but perhaps more importantly, it calmed me. Smiling helped me stay focused and attentive during many hectic moments in the office. In fact, science backs this up: One study found that Smiling reduces the body’s response to stress.
My mother’s smile not only got me through some of the most difficult times in my life, but also enabled me to succeed in a profession that was demanding and involved great risks. Now that I’m older, I understand that the ability to laugh and smile often, combined with hard work and intelligence, makes for a strong leader.