Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (15 page)

Don't be afraid of the sound of your own voice. Growing up, girls of my generation heard that they should let the boy do the talking. We were supposed to ask lots of questions, nod enthusiastically, and punctuate their soliloquies with comments like “Oh wow.”

That kind of instruction seems to haunt us in our careers, no matter how much of value we have to say. In her best-selling book
You Just Don't Understand,
linguist Deborah Tannen cites research on how women with expertise in a certain field showed support for their male conversational partners (saying things like “Yeah” and “That's right”) far more than the nonexpert they were talking to showed support for
them.
The women not only didn't wield their expertise as power, but tried to play it down and make up for it through extra assenting behavior. They acted as if their expertise were something to
hide.
The need to be nice and develop rapport subjugated any desire to show off knowledge and experience.

Tannen believes that one of the reasons men get into lecturing women is
because
women listen attentively and don't interrupt with challenges, sidetracks, or “matching.” Men also attempt to lecture other men, but the male listeners are experienced at butting in with their own opinions.

Though women may think they're doing the right thing by being such attentive listeners, Tannen wonders if men may actually be disappointed in a conversational partner who turns out to have nothing to say.

Show off your expertise, offer your insight. You'll be surprised at how much they like it. And don't be embarrassed about your experience as a female. When
McCall's
hosted a roundtable discussion with the seven female U.S. senators, Senator Barbara Boxer of California said, “One thing I sense we do more than our male colleagues is use our experiences. We don't put our experiences over here and our senatorship over there. It becomes one.”

Senator Patty Murray of Washington concurred: “We bring our personal struggles to the Senate—and we're not afraid to talk about them and fight for them. That's why you're seeing the women senators coalescing around budget, health, education and workplace issues—because we struggle with these at home.”

THREE LITTLE WAYS TO SOUND GUTSIER

Though you shouldn't be afraid to sound like a woman, you don't want to sound like a good girl.

1. Always Cut to the Chase

When it's time to pitch an idea to me, good-girl editors often start off giving lots of background information, and slowly wind their way to what the essence of the story is going to be. By the time they get there, I'm in a stupor or convinced that the idea isn't good because if it was the editor would be bursting at the seams.

The gutsy girls, on the other hand, start with a clear, powerful working title that snares you immediately Then they succinctly build their case. I had an editor pitch an idea the other day with the title “Love Map to Your Husband's Body: His 7 Best Pleasure Points.” I can't help it—I wanna know more.

You should use the same get-to-the-point strategy when you talk in business. And come to think of it, the catchy title idea could work well, too. Consider what a great reaction you'd get if you announced to your boss that you had “A Surprising New Way to Boost Sales,” “Software that Will Revolutionize How the Department Does Business,” or “Four Steps that Will Trim the Fat off the Budget.”

These cut-to-the-chase guidelines ought to be used in every memo you write, too.

2. Never Start a Statement with “I Don't Know”

Carol Gilligan found that the girls she studied often used that phrase to introduce their most astute observations, and I've noticed how often women use it too, even when they are about to offer a legitimate opinion.

3. Don't Hedge

Years ago, long before I heard of Deborah Tannen, I interviewed a linguist named Robin Lakoff, who had documented the speech patterns of women. According to Lakoff, throughout history women have listened more than they've spoken and agreed more than they have confronted. They have been delicate and indirect when they've spoken, and have said dangerous things in such a way that their impact would be felt after the speaker was out of range of the hearer's retaliation. They have had to do this in order to survive and even flourish without control over economic, physical, or social reality.

Though the same conditions don't exist, many of the speaking patterns remain, and they can undermine you in a business setting. They make you sound as if you're confused, unsure, or uncommitted. In your language you want to watch out for words that convey impreciseness, such as so and
such,
hedges like
kind of,
intonation patterns that make statements resemble questions, and excruciating politeness.

A FEW CANDID WORDS ABOUT HONESTY

While we're on the subject of talking, I'd like to say a few words about telling the truth.

Good girls learn very early that honesty is the best policy, and that principle will serve you well in your work. Beyond the morality issue, if you become known as untrustworthy, it will stymie many of your efforts. But on the other hand—how do I say this without having you think I'm a terrible person— there's such a thing as being too honest for your own good. Let me put that another way. It's important to tell the truth but you don't always have to tell the whole truth.

A good girl has a tendency to go overboard in her truth telling, offering up gory details that aren't required and could end up hurling her. Several months ago, for instance, I received a letter from two women, in business together, who wanted to talk to me about a line extension idea for the magazine. Intrigued, I invited them in for a meeting. One of the first questions I asked was how they came to Stan their own company, and they took turns talking about the work experience they had before they met. Each volunteered that she had been “let go” from a large corporation due to downsizing. Now, there's nothing wrong with that—lots of us get fired and lots of terrific entrepreneurial ventures are born that way. But “I was let go” is a loaded sentence, one capable of leaving even the most open-minded among us seeing a large
FIRED
sign above the person's head during the entire conversation. In certain instances these women might need to be forthcoming,
but it wasn't necessary in this case.
Each could have simply said, “I worked for so-and-so and then decided to go into business for myself,” which is exactly what a man would have said.

Resist the good-girl urge to confess when no one would expect you to anyway. And if it is essential for you to reveal something negative, remember that there's more than one way to tell the truth. The best lesson I ever learned about this is from Merrie Spaeth, president of Spaeth Communications, Inc., in Dallas and former media adviser to President Reagan. “When you speak, it doesn't matter to your listener whether you use a good word— one that reflects well on you—or a bad one,” she says. “However, if you give the listener a choice between good words and bad words, he is virtually
certain
to remember the bad ones.”

So instead of bad words like
trouble, fail, disaster,
and
incomplete,
use lots of good ones, like
solution, fix, turnaround,
and
progress.

HOW A GUTSY GIRL TAKES A COMPLIMENT

Quite simply, she takes it. A good girl, on the other hand, always pooh-poohs compliments. You tell her she looks terrific and she says, “Oh, I don't. This suit is ancient.” You say she did a great job and she replies, “Well I wish I'd had more time.” She's afraid that if she accepts the compliment without question or qualification, she'll appear egotistical.

A few months ago I was seated at the same table as Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois at a luncheon in her honor. Midway through the meal she was asked to speak for a few moments about programs and legislation she was focusing on. What a speaker she was—eloquent, forceful, charming. Later over dessert she happened to mention that she was reading a book about oratory, and this overbearing guy at the table announced, “You're a fantastic speaker, you don't need to do one single thing differently.” Perhaps due to my residual good-girl tendencies, I sat there waiting for the senator to demur, to say something like, “Well, there's always room for improvement.” Instead she offered a big smile and said, “Thank you very much.” It was incredibly refreshing and effective.

A GUTSY GIRL'S SECRET WEAPON

One of the best parts of winning
Glamour
magazine's college contest was the prize trip to New York and Great Britain. In New York we stayed at the old Biltmore Hotel, where we were pampered like crazy and got a taste of life as we'd never known it. On one of our mornings in New York several of us had been sent to a hotel suite to have our hair done by one of the top hairdressers in New York, in preparation for a photo shoot. Room-service breakfast was running about twenty minutes late, and finally the fashion stylist on
Glamour's
staff, this fabulously self-assured blonde, picked up the phone, dialed the room-service number, and in a chilly voice announced that if we didn't have breakfast immediately, there would be serious consequences.

The hairdresser looked at me and said gleefully. “Doesn't she sound just like the Duchess of Windsor?”

From that day forward I decided that was how
I
warned to sound. Over the years I did learn to use the Duchess of Windsor tone on more than a few airline sales agents and a few people whom I dealt with professionally.

But you know what? It never really worked for me. I not only felt uncomfortable trying to be overly tough or nasty, but it was also never very effective.

Since then I have discovered a much better approach: graciousness. You are polite, charming, eager to be understanding.

The woman who is the master at this is Ivana. I expected her to be snooty, not based on anything I'd read, but rather on the sheer fact that she'd been so pampered for years—and also because so many of the celebrities we interview are so demanding and bratty.

Well, within two minutes she had everyone eating out of her hand. She was funny, kind, interested in everyone at the table, not the least bit annoyed that this was the one day the kitchen staff chose to be late with everything. I had placed a box of note cards by her place, and she opened it with the same excitement she'd have for a box from Cartier.

I think good girls are sometimes encouraged to overcompensate by being too tough and demanding. Sometimes toughness is the only thing that will work. But most of the time, if the slide carousel is jammed, you'll get the hotel's AV guy to come to the conference room much faster if you graciously ask for help rather than if you throw a hissy fit.

WHY YOU MUST BE YOUR OWN PR AGENT

Good girls are notorious for hiding their light under a bushel. Every management and communications consultant I've spoken to in recent years has said that the women they work with need to be prodded and pushed into championing their own accomplishments.

Why is it so hard for us to toot our own horns? We've always been told not to hog the limelight and we've been led to believe that if we're good, the right people will eventually notice. Not true. PR whiz Andrea Kaplan says, “You absolutely must promote yourself because if you don't, no one else will.”

On the other hand, overselling yourself won't work either. It comes across not only as rude, but even as desperate. You need a more subtle approach.

The trick for any gutsy girl then is to learn to promote herself in a way that gets noticed, but doesn't come across as braggadocio.

•  “Write the damn memo”: This is an expression used by management and communications consultant Karen Berg. Berg says that no matter how much she encourages women to send memos alerting their boss about their accomplishments, they find excuses for not doing it. Stop hedging or putzing around.

•  Be selective. In working with Andrea Kaplan, I discovered that one of her key strategies in promoting stories from the magazine is to be selective. Sure, there may be times when you hope to get something on the AP wire, but there are also nuggets that you offer solely to
Entertainment Tonight.
Giving someone an exclusive not only scores you points, but it can make the item seem juicier. You need to do the same with your own good news. Let your boss know but don't blab it all over, as if you'd just been picked to be on
Jeopardy.
It will not only water down the accomplishment, but it could also provoke lots of envy in your peers.

•  Share the glory—but not too much of it. The common wisdom today is that it's vulgar to hog all the glory for yourself. People will be far more supportive of you and happy for your success if you share the glory by using “we.” The memo you send starts off with “We did it,” rather than “I did it.” But, on the other hand, you want to make certain your boss knows the role you played.

•  Never say, “I was lucky.”

HOW TO GET YOUR NAME ON THE RIGHT PEOPLE'S LIPS

Personal PR isn't just a matter of trumpeting your accomplishments. You want to pop to mind with the people that matter. In fact, all the strategies I talked about for improving the way you look and sound won't do you any good if you're sitting at your desk. You must be “out there.” A few strategies:

•  Take advantage of any reason to deal with your boss's boss.

•  Work on interdepartmental committees and projects. Jane Hedrick Walter, president of Career Development Consultants in Greensboro, North Carolina, says that it's so important to get visibility outside of your department that if you can't find an interdepartmental task force to take part in, start one yourself.

•  Speak to key people in your company at office parties and conferences. Interestingly, they're often standing alone because employees feel awkward approaching them. Do not, however, put them on the spot by asking about company matters (“Will we really be relocating?”). Instead ask their opinion of industry news and trends that you've been boning up on.