Hace un tiempo acompañé a una amiga a hacer una devolución en una tienda bastante cara.  Ella había pagado una pequeña fortuna por una cartera y a los dos meses se le rompió el cierre. Iba decidida a que le devolvieran el dinero pero suponía que como ya habían pasado tantos días no se lo querrían devolver. Cuando entramos al local, mi amiga estudió unos instantes a las vendedoras y luego de apuntar con la cabeza a una en particular, me dijo: "Esa es la gerenta."

En efecto, era la gerenta y luego de disculparse profusamente, le ofreció a mi amiga una cartera más cara por el mismo precio que había pagado la suya y su garantía personal por un año de que no tendría ningún problema. Mi amiga aceptó.

Más de una vez habrás escuchado a alguien decir cosas como: "La culpa es mía porque yo le di ese proyecto cuando no estaba listo para hacerlo", "La responsable soy yo porque tendría que haberle explicado mejor cómo hacer X," o "Yo asumo la responsabilidad de no haber entregado la tarea a tiempo".

Y seguro que habrás escuchado en más de un discurso ya sea de aceptación de un premio o de apertura o cierre de una conferencia cosas como: "Nada de esto hubiera sido posible sin la colaboración de mi equipo", "Yo no hice nada, la que realmente se merece el aplauso es X".

If you analyze how you speak and how women around you speak, I bet you'll probably start to notice that often we women tend to finish our sentences with an upwards intonation at the end, as if we were asking a question. (For example, I think we have to switch providers?)

This habit is so common that you probably don't even notice it anymore. But the reality is that this way of communicating undermines what you say and makes you seem insecure about yourself. And let's not even go into how this makes you lose authority in front of other people.

Now let's focus on the men around you and women in power that you know. It's more likely that, unless they're actually asking a question, what they say will sound much more like statements. (For example: We need to change providers.)

If you want to get to the next level, you have no choice but to adjust some details right now that will make your supervisors see you as the successful woman that you want to be.

When I was a little girl, whenever I'd ask my mother about what she'd like to do once my siblings and I had grown up and she could go back to work, she would always respond the same way: "Anything but the boss." Her answer to our question eventually became a repeated dicho within my family. It was especially funny because my mother was always telling people what to do and giving everyone directions on how to organize their lives--and we'd use her expression constantly to explain why she always was actually the boss in our family, even more so than my father!

I share this anectode so you can see that "being the boss" is first a personal conviction, followed by an attitude that you adopt that makes you see yourself and makes others see you as "the boss."