Yesterday, I went to the Women in Tech Hampshire summer BBQ, hosted just outside Southampton at a local business park. I had watched the team at Spectrum IT deliver the event multiple times on LinkedIn, but hadn’t had the courage to go along, even though I’m outgoing and love being around new people, something about branching out of my usual comfort zone of big tech scared me. My way to get around the anxiety of going to the event was to tell people at work that I was going, almost as a commitment to myself that I was going to put myself out there with a new group of people.

The event is hosted every other month, and features a panel of women that talk about a particular subject – in the past they’ve had topics like female founded companies and neurodiverse leadership. This time, it was about general female leadership in tech. I turned up, not sure what to expect, and immediately found another woman on her own so we started talking and gradually we both felt a lot more comfortable. We invited a few more people to sit with us as they were also on their own and we had formed a group of five within the first fifteen minutes.

I’ve spoken on podcasts before about community being a particularly important part of belonging as humans, and that in my experience as a flautist, the community is great because you can turn up, know nothing else about the person but their love of the flute or love of music. I had the same feeling at this event. Once we’d got our food we found a table, and immediately started finding common ground in our use of AI, and our opinions of using LLMs to help us with our day to day work, the ways into work that didn’t involve a degree, and the sorts of technology that we all worked on. We had something in common which immediately made everyone feel like they belonged.

Once we’d eaten, we were ushered into the conference room with over 50 women crowded around tables and perched on tables around the edges. The panel included three leaders – Andrea, Anita, and Tiffany. The questions were fascinating, ranging from whether they had any female mentors as they progressed through their careers, how they found being the only female in a boardroom, and their advice for women contemplating leadership. I particularly found it interesting when a member of the audience asked what to do when as a technical developer, she was told that she needed to move into management to progress – the answer was to negotiate with her work or leave the job and find somewhere that celebrated you as an individual contributor.

Often, I find that female-led tech panels are cringe, or they regurgitate the same advice. However, in this panel I felt a level of comfort between the panellists and the audience. We didn’t pretend that a woman could have it all, there had to be sacrifice, the panellists acknowledged how privileged they were to be in the position of authority that they held, and the discussion about handling family and the demands of a career were interesting. I felt a level of candidness from the women that I hadn’t seen before.

As a product manager, part of my role is to lead without authority. Bring teams together to achieve something they didn’t think possible, deliver a business case for a new product to gain approval, negotiate and deliver across the business with teams that don’t work together. I was intrigued that, given all three panellists were in people leadership roles, the discussion naturally gravitated towards management responsibility.

It made me realise that I’d come to see leadership differently. Most of my career has been spent in roles where I haven’t needed formal authority to get things done. As a product manager, I’ve had to learn how to influence people, bring teams together, and create momentum without ever being their manager. Having panels like this in big tech are few and far between, and so hearing their experience gave me pause for thought about what I could aspire to, rather than be afraid of.

I’ll definitely be coming back, what a warm, lovely, diverse, and welcoming community of women (and the odd man). I felt like I could have something in common with anyone there, and I really appreciate having my eyes opened to businesses outside of my usual comfort zone. It’s important to be reminded that smaller companies operate outside of big tech.

I spent the drive there worrying about whether I’d fit in outside of my usual world of big tech, and within fifteen minutes I was sat with four strangers talking about AI and career journeys as though we’d known each other for ages. Communities often feel intimidating from the outside, but once you’re in the room, most people are just looking for someone to sit with.