My First Business Trip

My first business trip came only a few months into my first job.

We were traveling to visit customers and suppliers in another country, in a large city. A short flight of about three hours. My manager was coming along, as well as another colleague who had already been with the company for a year. I remember how proud I felt.

I was never one of those students who seemed destined for a corner office. I was not active in every student association, did not attend every networking event, and did not position myself as a future CEO who would travel the world. Not because I performed poorly. My grades in my masters program were actually very good. I simply kept to myself, focused on my student job, and spent my free time with friends from my hometown.

So being selected for one of those sought after and almost mythical business trips felt like a personal victory. Especially because I had landed my job before finishing my degree and started just two weeks after handing in my thesis. While many of my peers were still searching for their first role, I was packing for my first work trip abroad.

I was incredibly proud. And absolutely terrified.

How much should I pack? What do you wear in the evenings when customers are not joining? What if I bring too much luggage? Or too little? What if I make the wrong choice in something as trivial as clothes and it quietly confirms a suspicion that I do not quite belong here yet? I wanted to be prepared, but I did not want to look like an amateur. I wanted to appear effortless, even though nothing felt effortless at all.

So I packed as carefully as I could and hoped neither my manager nor my colleague would comment on it.

I only brought hand luggage and a separate suit bag. I had packed two suits since the trip was only a few days. The others had somehow managed to squeeze their suits into their carry on bags and planned to iron everything at the hotel. That earned me a small remark about why I was carrying a suit bag by hand. Apart from that, everything went smoothly.

What they did not know was that I had brought far too many shirts and sweaters.

In the evenings, unless customers were joining, we were not expected to wear suits. But I had no idea how formal or casual things would be, so I prepared for every possible scenario. When we arrived late on the first day, we went straight out for dinner and then to bed. I had chosen an outfit that could work in both a formal and casual setting. A t shirt with a shirt worn open on top.

If it turned out to be more formal, I planned to button the shirt and casually pretend I had forgotten my blazer in the hotel room so I could go back and put it on. Luckily, it was casual enough that I could keep the shirt open and relax.

Looking back, it is almost funny how much mental energy I spent on these decisions. But at the time, they felt important. Not because clothes matter that much, but because I believed that every small mistake could be added to an invisible list.

That fear was closely tied to ambition. When you want to succeed, perfection can start to feel like a requirement rather than a goal. You try to eliminate mistakes before they happen. You rehearse conversations. You double check emails. You overthink outfits. All in an attempt to prove that you belong and that you are worth investing in.

The meetings themselves were uneventful. They went well. The evenings were pleasant. The journey home was smooth. But I still remember the feeling of that first business trip. Pride. Nervousness. And the sense that my ambitions and goals were suddenly a little closer, even if I was not yet comfortable admitting that to myself.

Since then, those trips have multiplied. Today I travel somewhere between forty five and sixty days a year. Often on long and exhausting journeys. The logistics have become routine. Packing takes minutes instead of hours. The anxiety has mostly faded.

But the underlying thoughts have not disappeared entirely.

I saw that clearly during my second job.

I was traveling to one of our offices in another country together with a junior colleague. We landed early in the morning and went straight to the office, so we arrived at the airport wearing suits. Later that evening, we were going out for dinner with colleagues from the local office. Before that, we stopped by the hotel to check in.

I decided to change clothes. Still, the thought crossed my mind. What if everyone else just goes out in their suits? What if changing sends the wrong signal? Too relaxed. Not serious enough. Not ambitious enough.

As I stepped into the hallway, I met a female colleague who had made the same decision. When I walked down to meet my junior colleague, he came out wearing his suit. When he saw us dressed more casually, he said, “Oh, no suit? I will just change and be right back.”

We waited, and he returned in something more relaxed. And that was it. No comments. No raised eyebrows. No silent judgment. The evening continued exactly as planned.

What struck me afterwards was not his reaction, but how familiar his hesitation felt. That brief moment of uncertainty. The silent calculation. The fear of choosing wrong and having that choice mean something bigger than it actually does.

Many of us carry that with us, especially early on. The belief that one wrong decision could derail a trajectory. That being perfect is the price of admission to that corner office we pretend not to want too badly. Over time, you learn that careers are rarely that fragile. Most people are far too busy with their own doubts to closely inspect yours.

The confidence we admire in others is often just the absence of visible fear, not the absence of fear itself. And slowly, trip by trip, decision by decision, you realize that belonging is not granted by flawless execution. It is built by showing up, making choices, occasionally getting them wrong, and continuing anyway.

That realization does not arrive all at once. It grows quietly, somewhere between packed suit bags, changed outfits, and dinners that turn out just fine.

Dear Meeting Room,

At the start of my career, I didn’t know the difference between respect and fear, at least not in a workplace setting. For me authority was a strange mix of admiration and anxiety. I wanted to be noticed, but not exposed.

My first real boss didn’t make it easier. He was charismatic and wildly extroverted, the kind of leader who filled a room before he even said anything. He had a certain way of making jokes that made everyone laugh, but also more often than not, he made someone look stupid in the process. Ask a clumsy question, and he’d riff off it with sharp wit. Everyone would laugh. Mostly at his joke, not the person, but if you were that person, you felt it.

What no one tells you early on is that once you’re seen a certain way, it sticks.

So, I stopped asking him questions. I didn’t want to be that guy that was always laughed at. The one people associated with punchlines. I started to ask my colleagues instead. Asking them the questions I didn’t dare voice out loud. And most often when my boss was not around. It wasn’t that he was mean, he was actually a kind person, I believe. He just liked making people laugh a little too much. Even if it meant someone else became the setup for the punchline.

What no one tells you early on is that once you’re seen a certain way, it sticks. At another job, a few years later, I ended up in the “funny guy” role. Not because I was trying to be funny, I just liked lightening the mood. But my manager didn’t really know what to do with it. His way of responding was to “one-up” me with louder jokes. We’d go back and forth in front of others, and somehow I always ended up being the one who looked dumber. Not intentionally, I think. But he was the boss. His laugh carried more weight.

 So I stopped joking. Especially when he was around. But now the damage was done. He kept joking with me, even when I gave nothing back, and slowly, I became the one who could be joked with. I felt like I was not taken seriously. And the worst part? At the same time, I was leading a top-secret project with the c-suite. I was doing the best, most serious work of my career, but I couldn’t talk about it due to the confidentiality of the project. I couldn’t show it. So I stayed in the shadow of a role I never asked for.

That’s the thing about authority, it shapes the room, even when it doesn’t mean to.

I remember a meeting from that first job. A director had joined us to discuss sales strategy. I wanted to say something. I had ideas. But I never found the right moment. Never felt bold enough. I kept trying to time it, to jump in without sounding junior. But I missed my window. I stayed quiet. And I still think about that meeting. Not because I had something revolutionary to say. But because I let fear of being misunderstood overrule my desire to be heard.

Around that same time, another person joined the company, someone with more experience, more presence. During her visit to our office, I watched her ask every question I was afraid to ask. Smart ones, simple ones. Even the slightly dumb ones. No one batted an eye. That’s when I realized: it’s not just what you ask. It’s how.

Confidence isn’t loudness. It’s ease. And I didn’t have that yet.

These days, I’m more confident. Not immune to hierarchy, but not defined by it either. I’m relatively high up in the organization now, and that comes with a different kind of visibility, one that lets you shape culture, not just respond to it. I still think about how authority bends a room, how easily one comment or reaction can define someone else’s role without meaning to. So I try to hold onto the professionalism, without repeating the patterns I once shrank under.