Confidence Is Not
A Personality.
It Is A Somatic Skill.

Maya had been standing in the hallway for almost four minutes. She knew this because she had checked her phone twice, and the second time the clock had moved by exactly three minutes, which meant the first check had cost her a minute all on its own. The hallway smelled like carpet cleaner and the faintly burnt coffee drifting from the kitchen two doors down. Under the fluorescent light, the edges of her folder had begun to curl from the heat of her grip.

Through the glass wall of her manager's office, she could see Renee reading something on her laptop, one hand resting on a mug. Renee did not look busy. She did not look unapproachable. She looked like a person sitting in an office, reading an email, drinking tea. There was no obvious reason not to knock.

Maya had spent the better part of an hour preparing for this conversation. A short pitch — three minutes at most — about a process improvement she wanted to test. She had written bullet points, crossed them out, rewritten them in shorter phrases, and rehearsed them twice in the bathroom mirror with the water running so no one would hear her. She knew the numbers. She knew the logic. What she lacked was whatever invisible chemical allowed other people to turn a door handle without feeling as though they were stepping onto a gallows...