Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (13 page)

3.
Foster a little competition. Though employees want you to be fair, they also thrive when there's healthy competition. Send out a memo praising a particular employee's accomplishment. Give the person with the great idea a chance to present it elsewhere in the company.

4.
Sound firm. Say “Please get it to me 9:00
A.M.
Monday” rather than “It would be great if you could get it to me Monday.”

5.
Run Gutsy Meetings. Employers give the impression they enjoy easygoing meetings where they get to shoot the breeze, laugh and joke. But what they really want from you are tight, short meetings with clear agendas and resolutions. Only invite those who are absolutely necessary. Distribute a written agenda of the general points you want addressed. Don't allow interruptions or distractions. Keep it to half an hour if possible, an hour tops, and end by summarizing the key decisions and the steps to be taken (along with deadlines about when people will get back).

BUT NONE OF THIS MEANS YOU SHOULD BE A BITCH

When I say that it's important to be tough and firm, by no means do I suggest you be a bitch. There was a time when bitchiness in the corner office had a certain cachet—you got to pretend you were playing a Joan Crawford role in a movie—but those days are over. Though we think of bitches as being tough and mean, I've come to believe that in many cases they are former good girls who are overcompensating. As soon as they feel taken advantage of or threatened, their adrenaline pumps up and they act like Doberman pinschers.

Though bitchiness works short term—people scatter out of your office and immediately begin toeing the line—in the long run it will be your undoing. Employees wait anxiously for bitches to get theirs, do what they can to facilitate that, and gleefully watch as the boom comes down. It's not just a women's issue. Mean bosses of both sexes put themselves in jeopardy these days.

HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO WORSHIP YOU

I'm about to make a statement that will seem to contradict everything I've said up until now in this chapter. To assure your success, you need to have the people you work with feel a fierce sense of devotion toward you.

How can this make any sense after I've stated you shouldn't worry whether or not people like you. Because liking someone and being devoted to them isn't one and the same thing.

To inspire devotion, you must give people something they secretly want. It doesn't mean you have to be their best friend or mother, bend over backwards for them, do their dirty work, solve their problems, or listen to them describe their herniated disc in great detail. Here's what I think they're really looking for.

The Secret Thing Your Boss Wants:
PASSION

Your
passion. Yes, your boss expects you to be good at your job, but what she truly wants is for you to be passionate— about what you do, about the department or organization, and yes, passionate about working for her.

Being passionate doesn't mean staying late every night to clean the blackboards. It means demonstrating a turbo-charged enthusiasm for what you're doing
and
what your boss is doing.

An important aspect of showing your passion is what I call “face time.” Make your presence known, let your boss in on what's happening, stick your head in her door just to let her see that you're “back,” send along thought-provoking articles relating to the business with “Thought you'd be interested” Post-its. In the thick of my good-girl days, I allowed myself to believe that keeping a low profile made my boss happiest because I wasn't being a nudge. But since then I've come to see that absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder.

Management consultant Kathy Strickland, head of the Strickland Group in New York City, who has trained some of my managers, says laughingly that she, too, can't resist this kind of passion. “I often tell the people who work for me that they can feel free to call me with questions or issues, even if it's two in the morning. Generally, they don't. They're good and they solve their own problems. I have this one dynamite person, though, who loves to check in with me, run something by me, and though I know everyone views her as an ass-kisser, I have to admit. I love it.”

What you don't want to do is cross the line into making yourself look gushy or needy or desperate for approval. The key is to keep the focus on the work, not yourself.

There are some bosses who just don't like face time, from anyone. What can happen is that the more you try to work your way into the inner circle, the more she'll pull back. “It's not unlike the dance lovers do in which one person is the pursuer and the other the distancer,” says psychotherapist Marjorie Lapp. “The harder the pursuer pursues, the more distance the distancer attempts to place between the two of them.”

If you keep your antennae up, you'll notice it. Your boss may seem irritated by your having popped into her office or exasperated with some of your questions. She may actually try to create some physical distance, moving back or going behind her desk. The best strategy is to pull back a little and create some room.

The Secret Thing Your Subordinates Want:
PASSION

In this case, their
own
passion. They want to come alive, be in love with what they do, and it takes a certain kind of boss to foster that.

Now, if you were to ask people what kind of boss they like best, they might very well describe a Barney boss—someone who sets up one of those kinder, gentler work environments. Don't believe them. As I said before, the Barney approach not only prevents people from performing at the top of their game, it also, I've come to believe, fails to inspire the fierce adoration you might think it would.

Why not? Consider this scenario: You are about to marry and you are allowed to determine which kind of marriage it will be:

A. a safe, predictable, fuzzy slipper of a relationship, with okay sex, rated PG

B. an exciting, sometimes unpredictable union with the sexiest sex, rated R

Wouldn't you go for B?

I think it's the same with bosses. Deep down most of us really want a boss who will help us discover our professional G spot, who will find what we're most passionate about and let us run with it, who will give us a sense of our own power and importance. That doesn't happen in a fuzzy slipper of an environment, but rather in a setting that is sometimes pressured and hectic.

The best way to find that G spot?

•  Ask individual subordinates how they would do things. Listen not only to their answers, but what it reveals about their thinking, their interests, their desires.

•  Charge them up not only about their specific responsibilities but the overall mission. Warren Bennis, author of
Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge,
said people yearn to be “part of a worthwhile enterprise.”

•  Challenge your subordinates to solve their own problems. When they turn to you unrelentingly for advice, tell them you want them to get back to you with possible solutions. They may look wounded initially but solving their own problems will turn them into grown-ups.

•  Don't feel you have to be one of them or play down your own powerfulness in the organization. They like it because it rubs off on them.

•  Create task forces of several people in your department to generate ideas or solutions.

•  Have periodic crunch projects that call for staying late and ordering pizzas.

•  Don't reveal
everything
. Keep them curious.

•  Ask them to help on special projects and don't feel you have to reward them. In his fabulous book
Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who Knows the Game,
Christopher Matthews says that “the little secret shared by smart politicians is that people get a kick out of being propositioned. The smart politician knows that in soliciting someone he is not so much making a demand, but offering the person the one thing he himself wants: the opportunity to get involved ” A good girl needs to learn this. Give your staff the sense that the best prize is simply being on your team.

THE SIX MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE TO CULTIVATE (BESIDES YOUR BOSS)

It's not enough to have a bond with those you work with directly. You must also work constantly to forge alliances with all sorts of people in the organization who may at one point be in a position to help you. These will include people far below your level (mail room, accounts receivable, etc.), people of your rank in other departments, and even major players to whom you don't report directly but whom you may need to consult for information. As a gutsy girl I know says, “You never know when the guys in the print room will be in a position to save your hide.”

It's funny that even though women have a knack for forming relationships, they aren't as quick as men are to build these kinds of alliances. “Women have better skills at developing relationships than men, but less understanding of how crucial it is to have them with all sorts of people in the organization.” says University of West Florida assistant professor of management Gayle Baugh. “Women take an almost legalistic view of the workplace and feel that informal networks are improper.”

In fact, forming these alliances may be more important to your success than having a mentor. It's not that a mentor isn't of great value, but good luck getting one today, or at least getting one who's going to be around tomorrow. In these crazy times you can easily find that your mentor has been lured away by a headhunter, become the victim of a coup, or has finally decided to fulfill her dream of owning her own guest lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains. A gutsy girl knows she can't put all her eggs in one basket. Here are a few of the people you should be forming your alliances with:

•  The gatekeepers to power: secretaries. If they like you they will squeeze you into the schedule, keep you posted, even make remarks about your skill that will leave an impression on their boss.

•  The keepers of information. In every company there are people in middle or low rank who possess critical information. They are more likely to be forthcoming if they like you. A friend of mine realized recently that someone in her department was leaking valuable information to another company. The man in charge of the company's phone system did a search for her of office telephones that had made calls to that number.

•  People who perform basic services that one day you may need urgently. Like the print shop, the mail room, and computer services.

•  Cross-departmental employees whose work directly or indirectly affects yours. When I got to
McCall's
I knew it was critical to get as much information as possible about the reader, and I began to develop a nice relationship with the guy who was in charge of company research. Though some consumer research was done through his office, the magazine was “scored” each month using a questionnaire compiled, mailed, and tabulated by an outside firm many major magazines relied on. Once at a company party I complained to the researcher about how long it took to get the results, and how difficult it was to change the magazine when you didn't know until March how a September issue did. He looked at me with a twinkle and asked, “What if we did it by phone?” He created a whole system that allowed us to get results within three weeks of when the magazine arrived in someone's home.

•  Bosses in other departments. You might someday want to work for one of them. Just be careful that you don't develop a buddy-buddiness that threatens your boss.

•  Any smart, talented person who once worked with you and is now in another company or business.

How do you get all these various people to form alliances with you? Schmoozing works, so occasionally do boxes of sticky buns and tickets to ball games. But I think the best advice I ever heard on this subject came from Adele Scheele, when she was my career columnist at
Working Woman:
“Ask their opinion of something you're thinking of doing, listen to their answer, and then follow up.” More than sticky buns or ball games, people love to have you value their opinion. This works even with those no longer in your company. Pick up the phone from time to time and ask their advice.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Strategy #5: A Gutsy Girl Walks and Talks Like a Winner

T
his is a chapter about style versus substance. Though perhaps I should rephrase that just a little. This is a chapter about style
and
substance.

Okay, I know you're feeling tempted to skip over this section, but please don't. To a good girl, style is a frivolous word, even a dirty word, because it's the antithesis of the ethic she works by. A good girl believes that success should be based on the quality of her work, not on how good she looks or sounds. When she sees rewards handed to someone who simply talks a good game for worse, simply looks the part), she's appalled. She may conclude that the person making the decision has his values out of whack—or perhaps he is simply overwhelmed by a throbbing in his groin. A good-girl friend of mine complained to me the other day that a very flashy woman in her company had just gotten a VP title, which has always eluded my friend. “It's not fair,” she said. “I've paid my dues and she hasn't. They ought to call her vice president of pizzazz.”

The truth is that paying your dues in the form of accomplishing certain goals doesn't necessarily get you into the club you want to belong to. You have to look and sound like you deserve to be a member. The reason I didn't say you
also
have to look and sound the part is that in some cases looking and sounding alone are enough, as much as it might gall us to realize that. I once briefly had a woman on my staff who didn't have enough skill to edit a menu, but she went on to land one great job after another. This drove the people who worked under her nutty because to them she had such a shortage of real talent. Yet she speaks with utter assurance and dynamism, dresses beautifully, and when you are in her presence you're convinced she is a megastar.

Will her lack of substance catch up with her? Maybe. But maybe not. What you have to do is stop being annoyed by women like her and focus on the more positive aspect of the image issue. Though style alone can sell you, combining it with substance gives you the double whammy. If you're talented at what you do and mix it with a sizable flash factor, you are almost guaranteed success.

What it really comes down to is taking the idea of gutsiness and translating it to the way you look, sound, and come across. And at times that will mean doing something differently from the way you've always been told.

WHY TALENT AND BRILLIANCE AREN'T ENOUGH

Even as you accept the need to be gutsy with your image, it may still bug you that it has to be this way. You'd think that in a world of grown-ups, performance alone would matter. In our culture, however, we grow up learning that packaging carries lots of weight, and we soon transfer this lesson to judging people.

It's not always a matter of values gone askew. Sometimes those doing the judging simply don't have enough information to access your level of ability so they judge how deep it
seems
to be, based on your presentation of yourself.

I remember the exact moment I learned this terrible truth. I was just twenty-two and had been an editorial assistant in
Glamour's
merchandising department for a couple of months when suddenly the place was abuzz over a new assistant who would soon be joining the department. The editors who'd interviewed her were raving about how dynamic she was and they kept adding the phrase. “Wait till you see her portfolio.” When I'd first gotten out of college, several people advised me to put together a portfolio, but I hadn't bothered because it seemed so presumptuous. At that point all I had to show were articles I'd written for my college magazine, and I couldn't imagine that people would be wowed by pieces like “My Search for the Ghost of Union College.”

But the new editorial assistant, Debbie, hadn't felt the least bit reserved about showing off what she had done. As soon as she started I made it my business to get a glimpse at the famed portfolio and my jaw actually dropped as I went through it. The portfolio itself was professional quality (genuine leather), but the stuff in it was totally idiotic. She had one photographic series she'd titled “Ten Little Indians,” which consisted of ten pictures of her holding up from one to ten of her fingers. The only conclusion I could draw was that she had hypnotized the editors before they looked at it. What she had actually done was dazzle them with her self-assurance and gumption.

From that day on I understood that things like full-grain leather could compensate for a lot. What has continued to surprise me, however, is how much flash matters, even when you have plenty of skill and experience.

When I was called by a headhunter about the job of editor-in-chief of
Child,
I felt an incredible rush, not only because it sounded like a dream job, but also because I believed that with my background, I'd have a real shot at it. I'd been generating ideas and editing articles about being a woman and being a mother for years. Over breakfast with the headhunter, I realized after the first ten minutes that it would be pointless to go into lots of details about the columns I'd started or the ideas I'd generated. He was a smart guy, but he had never worked at a magazine. Of course, the fact that I'd been editing relevant material for a long time carried weight—that's how I'd gotten in the door—but there was certainly no way he could have looked at a section I'd taken over in a magazine and have made an assessment of my contribution.

My next meeting was scheduled with two people on the business side of the company and I realized that they might be no better equipped to judge my skills. How was I going to stand out?

I considered drumming up a presentation with slides or poster board. But I imagined their eyes glazing over as I described my special knack for creating article “sidebars.” Then I did something that surprised the hell out of me. I called a friend and asked to borrow her black silk Calvin Klein suit and I made an appointment to have my hair blown dry and styled before the second interview. If people weren't going to pay close attention to my background, perhaps they would pay attention to how I looked and sounded.

To this day I'm convinced I owe part of my success to an Infiniti 2000 blow-dryer.

Don't let any of this discourage you. As you learn to be gutsier with your image, you will find that it's not only fun but very empowering. Looking and sounding like a winner makes you feel like one.

HOW TO SEE YOURSELF LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES

Before you can begin to tinker with your style, you need to get a sense of how you actually come across to people—and that can be a very tricky thing to do. Quite often, especially when we're in the early stages of our work life, how we perceive ourselves doesn't bear much resemblance to how others view us.

I call this the Dr. Kildare Syndrome. When I was thirteen and used to walk up and down the streets of Glens Falls, New York, in my Dr. Kildare shirt, I truly believed that people thought I was a doctor. That same kind of perception gap exists for many of us. What you consider candidness may come across to others as poor judgment. What you think of as terrific exuberance may be viewed by others as immaturity. Since it's so hard to see yourself, how do you begin to determine the perception others have of you? There are a couple of ways.

Pay attention to the five-second comments people make to you about yourself

It would be nice if we could count on our bosses and coworkers to offer beneficial observations and advice about our behavior, but unfortunately that rarely happens. They do, however, manage to let their impressions sneak out in little ways that we generally ignore or mistake for either humor or grouchiness. When someone teases you about dressing “down” or keeping a low profile in a meeting or skipping out early on an important company party, you need to pay attention to the underlying message. Yes, it could be just a cheap shot, but it could also accurately signal that you're dressing wrong for the job, hiding your light under a bushel, or failing to schmooze enough with those who matter.

Watch a videotape of yourself

Okay, this sounds a little far-fetched. But today so many work events are videotaped that it may be easy to get hold of a tape that features you making a presentation or just being a participant, and you'll find that this is the best possible wake-up call about how you come across.

Trust me, it can be a shock to see for the first time how you handle yourself in a work selling. In my own case I fell like I needed CPR alter viewing myself on tape. I had a way of flapping my arms around when I talked that made me look like a pterodactyl. But once you get over the initial shock, you can evaluate what's working and what's not. Ask yourself these questions:

•  How's my energy level?

•  How's my posture?

•  What do my gestures and body language convey?

•  Do I seem to be connecting with people?

•  Is my voice forceful and effective?

•  Are people paying attention to me as I speak?

•  Do people in authority address their comments to me?

Answer this Question: Does your boss's boss know who you are?

If you're not known among those in power positions on the next level (or levels) of your company, you're not doing enough to network and/or highlight your accomplishments.

Answer this Question: How often does your boss trot you out to showcase your skills to higher management or your industry?

From time to time your boss will have the opportunity to show off star employees—for instance, by having them speak at conventions or industry functions, by having them make presentations of their research to higher-ups. As a boss I can tell you that the employees I choose to do this are those who I know will make
me
look good. But it's not simply a matter of their being highly skilled in their jobs. They also have to come across as dynamos. If they don't look “right,” I'm nervous about putting them out in front because of how people will perceive them. If you see others being shown off and you're not, it's time to consider your image.

THE HOLLYWOOD STARLET TRICK EVEN YOU CAN USE

President John Kennedy said that energy was everything, and if there were only one packaging tip I could give to the good girls who have worked for me, it would be, “Get some zip.” The right clothes and the right body language won't make up for operating on only four cylinders.

If your energy is consistently on the low side, you need to take a look at your lifestyle. Studies show that the four biggest energy zappers are lack of sleep, stress, poor eating, and lack of exercise. Stress is misleading because we've developed a false sense that it actually charges us up. It does momentarily, but according to Margaret Chesney, an epidemiologist at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, if the pressure continues, it begins to erode both our energy and our resistance to illness.

My energy level has always been pretty high, sustained by megadoses of caffeine. But even still, I find there are times when I'm about to go into a meeting or make a presentation when I'm feeling about as exciting as a bowl of overcooked pasta. In those cases I've learned to try to do a few things to jump-start myself, sometimes simply walking around for a few minutes beforehand. Sitting up in my chair also seems to help. When I was at
Mademoiselle,
we did this fun little article once on how the stars stay beautiful, and it was filled with silly stuff like taping one's breasts with gaffer's tape to give them the look of ripe cantaloupes. But one tip actually sounded worthwhile. Before they have publicity shots done, some actresses reportedly jump up and down and vigorously huff and puff just to make themselves look full of vitality for the photo. I haven't been forced to use this technique yet but I keep it in reserve.

THE NEW (AND IMPROVED) RULES OF DRESS FOR SUCCESS

Do you remember
Dress for Success
by John Molloy? If you've been in the workforce less than twelve years, you might not be familiar with it but you may have felt its effect indirectly. Mr. Molloy's book was primarily a guide for men, but he threw in tips for women that profoundly influenced how the majority of working women showed up at the office for many years afterwards. Here's the kind of advice he was offering:

There is one firm and dramatic step women can take toward professional equality with men. They can adopt a business uniform. Beyond any doubt the uniform should be a skirted suit and blouse. In most cases the suit should be dark and the blouse should contrast. It should not be pinched at the waist to exaggerate the bust. Colors avoided should be bright red, bright orange, and bright anything else.

Mr. Molloy also said in his book that the dress is the “ultimate seduction garment.”

It was in response to such gospel that millions of women like me donned dark, man-tailored suits, white shirts, and floppy bow ties that not only made us all look alike but resulted in our never being able to walk down the aisle of an airplane without being asked for a pillow or an extra bottle of Mr and Mrs T Bloody Mary mix.

Molloy didn't intend anything malicious. He was just trying to help women by putting us in uniforms that he believed would make it easier for men to accept our presence in the office.

The trouble is that Molloy played into the good-girl part of our nature by telling us that if we didn't follow the rules, we would fail or at the very least be called a slut. Times, of course, have changed. The floppy bow tie has gone the way of the poor boy sweater and Mr. Molloy has deleted the above advice from his book. Yet many of us still err on the side of caution when we dress because those old words are in the back of our heads.

Confusing matters even more is the fact that there are no contemporary guidelines around to replace what Molloy said. There are only two things we can be reasonably sure of today: