At 23, I once became convinced that my ability to work globally was about to be exposed by a pair of chopsticks.
Yes, chopsticks.
I was in Shenzhen, China, traveling with a group of senior leaders to explore the manufacturing opportunity in China for one of our divisions.
I was by far the youngest person there, not just in age, but in years of experience. These were people who had been running businesses for years. I was a few years out of university and still at that stage of my career where being invited into a room with senior executives felt exciting and slightly terrifying in equal measure.
We had spent hours looking at the opportunity in China, what we could manufacture there, what the economics looked like, where the risks were, what would need to change, and what the potential could be for the business. We had challenged assumptions, worked through the details, and made our case.
By the end of the day, everyone was feeling pretty good. I was feeling REALLY good. I had contributed, and I had held my own. People had asked what I thought and, rather importantly to 23-year-old me, actually listened to the answer. I remember walking into dinner feeling ridiculously proud of myself.
Then the food arrived.
I was seated next to the president of the division, which was already doing wonders for my ability to behave normally. Everyone started eating, and I looked down.
Chopsticks.
And I realized, with absolute horror, that I did not know how to use them.
Not, “I’m a bit rusty.” Not, “I can get through dinner if nobody watches too closely.” I had absolutely no bloody clue what to do with them.
I’d grown up in India and moved to the US at 17. Nobody had ever taught me how to use chopsticks; I had never taught myself, and until that exact evening it had somehow not appeared as a major gap in my professional development.
My brain, however, decided this was now VERY important.
I looked around the table, and everyone else had simply started eating. Nobody appeared to be thinking about how the chopsticks worked, nobody was examining hand placement, and nobody seemed to be running a small engineering study on the optimal angle required to pick up dinner. It was just me!
I remember sitting there making what felt like eighty decisions in about ten seconds. Could I watch the person across from me and copy him? Could I just pick the easy things? Could I talk a lot and avoid eating altogether? And then I got to the obvious answer: I could just tell them.
That was when the problem became something completely different.
Is this one of those things I am supposed to know?
And almost immediately after that: What are they going to think of me? What if they think I am inexperienced? What if they think I am not worldly enough? What if they wonder how someone who wants an international career does not know something this basic? What if they think I should not be here?
We had spent the entire day discussing manufacturing strategy in China and, within about thirty seconds, I had managed to convince myself that my professional credibility might now come down to whether I could successfully get dinner into my mouth using two wooden sticks.
Eventually, I just blurted out, “I’m sorry, I really don’t know how to use chopsticks.”
The entire table went silent. I mean SILENT! Everyone looked up. If my goal had been to deal with this discreetly, I had executed that beautifully.
Then the president of the division, sitting beside me, said, “That’s okay. Can somebody get her some cutlery?” And then he started telling me about the first time he had learned to use chopsticks. Someone brought me a fork, everyone went back to eating, and that was it.
Nobody reconsidered the work we had done that day. Nobody decided I was incapable of working internationally. Nobody called my manager the next morning and said, “We need to talk about Archita; dinner raised some concerns.” My career continued, and yes, eventually I learned how to use chopsticks.
Decades later, I continue to remember that dinner, because twenty-three-year-old me had spent an entire day discussing manufacturing strategy in China and then nearly came undone because I could not work out what to do with two sticks.
But the part I find interesting now is not that I worried about what everyone thought of me; it is what happened just before that. I had started with a fact: I did not know how to use chopsticks.
That part was true. Then, somewhere between looking down at my plate and opening my mouth, I added something else. I decided there must be a rule.
Someone who works internationally should already know how to use chopsticks.
Nobody had said that, nobody had explained it, nobody had even hinted at it. I had simply decided that this must be one of the rules, and once I had accepted the rule, the rest of the story almost wrote itself. If this is something I am supposed to know, and I do not know it, then maybe I am not experienced enough. Maybe I am not worldly enough; maybe I am not as ready for this as everyone thinks I am; maybe I should not be here.
The story only worked because I had accepted the rule first, and I wonder how often we still do this as adults.
We walk into rooms with all sorts of ideas about what someone like us is supposed to know, say, or already understand. A CEO should have the answer. A board member should not need the basic concept explained. Someone at my level should understand this financial model. A senior executive should not have to ask what that acronym means. If I am really ready for this job, surely I should already know how this works. If everyone else seems comfortable with it, surely I should be too.
Some of those rules are real. There are things you genuinely need to know to do your job well. There are cultural norms worth learning, skills you need to build, context you need to understand, and times when “I should know this” is absolutely correct.
But some of the rules are much harder to trace. Nobody told us, and nobody wrote them down. We just absorbed them somewhere along the way, or, occasionally, made them up completely on our own, and then we start judging ourselves against them.
Once you believe the rule, you rarely stop to ask whether the rule itself is true. Instead, you start behaving as though it is. You do not ask the question because you have already decided that someone at your level should know the answer. You sit through the meeting pretending to understand because everybody else seems to. You overprepare for a conversation because you have decided that good leaders should never be caught without an answer. You do not put yourself forward because you have already decided that people with your background do not usually get picked for that room. You answer the objection nobody raised. You defend the thing nobody attacked. You can end up spending an enormous amount of energy trying to pass an exam that nobody else even knows you are taking.
And that is different from simply worrying about what people think. Sometimes we should care what people think. Judgment matters, reputation matters, the opinions of your boss, your board, your customers, and the people making decisions about you can have very real consequences. But there is a difference between responding to an expectation that actually exists and trying to satisfy one you created yourself.
These days, when I catch myself heading down that road, I try to separate three things.
The fact.
The rule.
And the story I have built from it.
The fact is usually the easiest part. I do not understand this number; I have never worked in this industry; I do not know what that acronym means; I cannot use the bloody chopsticks.
Then I try to find the rule underneath it. What have I decided someone like me is supposed to know here?
Sometimes the rule is real. Then fine, learn it. Ask the question, do the work, close the gap. But sometimes, when you actually look at it, the rule gets much harder to defend.
Who said a CEO cannot ask that? Who said a board member needs to know every acronym? Who said entering a new industry means pretending you have spent twenty years in it? Who said one thing you do not know cancels out everything you were actually invited into the room to contribute?
So perhaps that is the question worth asking the next time you find yourself thinking, Shoot, I should know this.
Is this actually one of the rules, or have I just decided that it is?
At 23, I had a chopsticks problem. I did not have a credibility problem; I had invented that one. The chopsticks problem was much easier to solve. I asked for a fork.
Until the next room,
Archita