Three ways to correct it in the first meeting without losing the account
It is the kickoff and the CFO has just asked you to make sure the room has coffee. You lead the engagement. Your associate, 29 and male, sits beside you with his laptop open, and for eleven minutes the CFO has directed every substantive question to him. Across the table, your associate's eyes keep drifting toward you. The CFO does not. Even when you speak up, the CFO offers a courteous smile and then turns to your associate to ask what he thinks.
Handle this poorly and you forfeit the account, or you forfeit the room first, which drains the account more gradually. If you correct it well, you earn a client who trusts you with the next three years of work. If you say nothing, every meeting from here looks like this one, and your associate becomes the lead in the client's mind. Eventually the client asks for him by name, and your firm, which bills on relationships, hands over what the client asks for. The coffee order was never what actually went wrong. The next three years are.
The turning point
The CFO has not made any real decision yet. He is simply operating on a reflex, and reflexes are much easier to rewrite in the opening meeting in Baltimore than after the fifth one. He is not your enemy. In practice he is a budget built on an unexamined guess. Winning a debate is not required of you. The only thing you need to do is swap out the guess before it hardens into habit.
Why your presence in the room plays no part in this
According to Women in the Workplace 2025, women leaders are mistaken for someone junior at twice the rate of men. That finding reflects a recurring pattern rather than a verdict on how you conduct yourself. It happens to senior women at client tables across Baltimore, and most of them respond by working twice as hard in the second meeting. The client concludes that the associate generated the ideas while the lead just brings the enthusiasm. The costly response is to wait. The cheap one is a single sentence, spoken in those first eleven minutes, before anyone has settled on a story.
Three approaches to correcting the record during that first Baltimore meeting
Initially. Pick the question back up steadily, without any wavering. "I'll take that one. "This one is mine to decide on the engagement." Then give a complete answer. Make the point a single time, with warmth, and the whole room realigns.
Next. Redirect the coffee. Turn to your associate: "Would you check with the front desk on coffee?" Hand him the errand in the same tone you would use to hand him a spreadsheet. He is an associate, fetching things is part of that role, and the client has just seen you hand him a task.
Last. Spell out the structure as the meeting closes. "I'll run the weekly check-in with you personally." "He'll handle the data workstream and answer to me." You have just laid out the org chart aloud, and the client heard it from the person who sits at its top.
Not one of these three steps counts as a confrontation. Each one is a plain line that any lead might say, and that is exactly why it works. The person who was mistaken for junior stops the mistake by acting senior, out loud, without explaining herself.
The CFO directed his question about the coffee at you. Next week he will bring his forecast questions to you, since on day one you made it clear whom to ask.