In a recent interview with Adam Bryant of The New York Times, Lesa France Kennedy, CEO of the International Speedway Corporation and vice chairwoman of NASCAR, says this was the biggest challenge for her when she started out at ISC.
"Meetings would occur, and you might not actually be invited, and you would think that you should be there or that you would like to contribute," Kennedy says.
Rather than complaining or backing down, however, Kennedy's strategy was to play to her senior managers' egos.
She says she would meet with a senior manager, ask about the current problems he was dealing with, do the dirty work to solve those problems, and let him take credit for the solution in the meetings.
Over time, she says, the managers would start accepting her. "They would say, 'Well, I guess it's OK if she comes to this meeting,'" Kennedy says.
She then used those meetings to listen and figure out what the senior managers' biggest challenges were and help solve them from behind the scenes.
Rather than directly asking to be invited to the important meetings, Kennedy says it comes down to letting managers think the invite is their idea.
If she heard about a meeting that excluded her, she says she would ask an attendee, "Was there a meeting today? I would love to hear about it sometime. Maybe you could share something with me about it, as I'm really interested in that subject."
"If you're just persistent, eventually they accept you," Kennedy says.