The meeting was over. For one client, it continued through the weekend.
She had pitched for a piece of work she knew she could do. As the prospective client questioned her, she found herself explaining and defending. She knew the answers, but she left feeling that she had not been taken seriously.
A colleague called that weekend with ideas for another approach. He was constructive. The rest of her team did not blame her, and the prospective client had not walked away. She could see that no disaster had occurred. She still felt drained and kept going back over her part in the meeting. Had she said the wrong thing? Had she behaved in a way that made them doubt her?
When I asked what had hurt, she came back to the feeling that the people in the room had not understood what she could offer. She could not tell what they wanted, either. Usually, she could find a way to connect with someone. Here, she felt caught in a defensive position, trying to prove her competence without a shared sense of what the conversation was about.
That mattered to her for reasons beyond winning the work. She valued understanding people and being understood by them. She told me she had lost pitches before and accepted the outcome when the other person could clearly say what they needed. This time, she could not tell whether they had seen her work at all.
So she kept testing herself against the meeting. Perhaps a different sentence would have reached them. Perhaps she could learn something useful for the next pitch. But the more revealing question was whether she was taking sole responsibility for a connection that takes two people to make.
It can help to separate those questions after a conversation that stays with you. Is there something you said poorly, left out, or need to repair? You can address that. Then ask: What did I most want this person to understand, and was there room for that understanding between us?
My client began to consider that she might have prepared well and still met someone she could not quite reach. That did not erase the disappointment. It let her consider what she might change in a future pitch without assuming she alone could have made this conversation work.