Background: I'm a senior engineer on team A who, back in February, jumped onto team B to take over a project I had zero familiarity with due to the existing lead engineer's departure. The project design phase was complete, and I was taking over the implementation phase.
Over the course of getting up to speed and pushing forward on this project, it became very clear to me that the previous lead engineer had been...pretty checked out when they were designing the solution, and there were a lot of gaps in what product had spec'd out as well. I raised issues as I found them, contributed as an individual contributor while also mentoring and guiding the more junior engineers on the team, ended up redesigning significant pieces of the project architecture, and, beside one external factor that came into play last minute (that was also due to lack of coordination in the original design phase), we largely landed it.
So typing this all up and looking back I'm thinking, you know what, could've been smoother but that's pretty good, all things considered. The junior engineers I mentored seemed generally happy to work with me, the feature is out, we have clear next steps, and we didn't break anything massive.
Here's my dilemma:Right out the gate, team B's product manager didn't like the way I communicated. We are both women. She found me abrasive. I have consistently, inside and outside of review cycles, gotten really good feedback on how I communicate - I try to keep it kind, assume best intentions, and simultaneously be honest and unafraid to raise issues. the good feedback I've gotten has been from men and women. But team B product person found me "intense" and policed my expression in really petty ways. E.g. in zoom calls I routinely would not even be saying anything and she would make comments like - "uh oh, you look intense, is everything all right?" "Jane's expression has me worried!" "uh oh, Jane looks stressed!" "uh oh, Jane found a problem!"
She eventually gave my manager feedback that I "seemed stressed" too. I was fine with trying to get a poorly managed project that I jumped into across the finish line, but to have to try to monitor the way my face looked in zoom calls and make nice constantly with her/be self deprecating about my own need to push on project details (because they hadn't been accounted for in the phase they were supposed to!) was pretty exhausting.
So now I'm back on team A and the review cycle is coming up. I do NOT want to wait for someone else to set the tone first about my communication or "stress level" or whatever.
How can I proactively and constructively break down this experience into helpful feedback? Gender expression policing is so subtle; I'm really struggling with how to communicate why this was so non-productive for me to have to deal with.
