Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [24]
Earlier in Merrie Spaeth's career, a colleague arranged for her to meet the laic William Paley, founder and retired CEO of CBS, who was looking for someone to write his speeches. She was warned, however. Paley could be difficult and stubborn, and he had already gone through a bunch of male speech-writers, even though they had been deferential and eager to please. And by the way, she was told, you never called him anything but Mr. Paley.
Merrie listened and realized that if she was going to win him over, she would have to seem in command, unlike the yes-men When she walked through the door to meet Paley for the first time, she stuck out her hand and said. “Hi. Bill, I'm Merrie Spaeth ” He chuckled and it was the beginning of a great relationship.
CHAPTER FOUR
Strategy #2: A Gutsy Girl Has One Clear Goal for the Future
A couple of weeks after I signed the contract to write this book, there was a brief moment when I wondered if the publisher was going to call me and say that they still loved the idea for the book, but would I mind if Janet Reno actually wrote it. She'd just taken the heat for the FBI's Waco, Texas, fiasco, even though she wasn't really to blame. It was a refreshingly different tactic for a politician and the media loved it. A newspaper ran her picture with just the word GUTS over it. Janet Reno seemed to be the epitome of the gutsy girl.
A year later, however, the media wasn't being so flattering. In fact, the New York Times published a story with this headline: DRIFT AND TURMOIL IN JUSTICE DEPT: AURA OF CONFUSION LINKED TO ATTORNEY GENERAL'S PERFORMANCE.
Here's a highlight from the article:
These officials say the Attorney General has seemed indecisive, losing focus by taking on too many issues, hop-scotching from project to project… . The officials, including some who say they hope she succeeds, insist the public impression of Ms. Reno as the gutsy Florida prosecutor who took responsibility for the tear gas assault in April is at odds with the Attorney General they see every day.
What had gone wrong? How had the original gutsy girl ended up in such a big fat mess?
It's quite simple. No matter how gutsy Reno was about tackling individual situations, she had failed to come up with a strong, succinct vision for her “company”—or if she had, she hadn't articulated it clearly to those who worked for her. With a vision in place at the Justice Department, it would have been possible for Reno to pick projects without the appearance of hopscotching around—because any project that didn't fit the plan wouldn't be awarded priority. And it would have been easier to stick to decisions if there was a well-defined mission.
The moral of this story is that it's not enough to have a gutsy personality, to be someone who can take risks, create her own rules, and accept responsibility for any mistakes her staff makes with firearms. You have to have a vision, which becomes the context for any kind of gutsy moves you make or rule breaking you do.
Several years ago, R. N. Kanungo and Jay A. Conger, professor and assistant professor respectively of organizational behavior at Faculty of Management, McGill University, in Canada, look a look at leadership within organizations in order to strip the aura of mysticism from it. They found several behavioral components of charismatic leaders that distinguished them from noncharismatic ones. The charismatic