Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [35]
WHY GOOD GIRLS WORK HARDER THAN THEY SHOULD
At one of the magazines I edited, a department head hired a good girl who didn't know when to stop working. Whenever I asked to see a proposal she was putting together, the standard reply was, “I'm just finishing it up.”
She might have been smart, she might have been talented, but it was almost impossible to tell because she suffered from can't-let-go-of-it-itis. Her case was fairly extreme and yet I've seen so many good girls experiencing varying degrees of this problem. Management consultant Nancy Hamlin, who specializes in gender issues, calls it the good girl “spin.” Hamlin explains: “Women tend to work harder, do more research. They're always getting one more statistic.”
Why do we work harder and longer than we have to? I once asked this question of a guy on my staff, who was often the first to hand in an assignment as the good girls in the department buffed theirs to death. “Men, by definition, are lazy,” he said. “Women are trained to iron out wrinkles—every single inch of them.”
According to psychologist Robin Post, it's a good girl's need for perfection that makes her overcook her projects or inhibits her from getting out of the gate with what matters most. A good girl was encouraged all through school to do things perfectly, and she saw that, unlike boys, she wasn't given any kind of dispensation for handing something in that was a little rough around the edges. She might have written a glorious, insightful book report, but if there was a hole in the paper from a pen eraser, she wouldn't get a perfect grade. To this day, she's afraid there will be a penalty if it isn't just right.
That's not to say that the work you hand in should be sloppy or incomplete, but if you spend too long on it, you could undermine yourself. Many ideas lose their freshness and energy if you overknead them. And, of course, bosses get supremely irritated if you are late with a project or never step out of your office with something to show for your efforts.
Another reason good girls work too hard on some tasks: there's a feeling of safety working with what's familiar. If it's a choice between snuggling up to a cozy, dog-eared report you've had in your possession for six weeks or tackling something new, you may choose to snuggle.
And last but hardly least, good girls work too hard simply because they think they ought to.
The warning sign that you're working longer than you should on projects: You frequently hear yourself say:
• “I'm putting the finishing touches on it.”
• “I want to get it just right.”
• “This is going to be really comprehensive.”
WHY GOOD GIRLS WORK ON WHAT THEY SHOULDN'T BE WORKING ON AT ALL
Perhaps an even greater sin than working too hard on something you should be working on is working for a single minute on something you should have given to someone else.
Delegation doesn't come naturally to many people, even the best of managers, but as a good girl you have your own unique reasons for resisting it.
First, there's that perfection thing happening again. You're fearful that if you turn part of a key assignment over to someone, he or she may screw up and make you look bad.
Your good-girl nature also wants you to be perceived as a nice, thoughtful person. You're afraid that people will be annoyed with you if you dump too much work on them, particularly grunt work. I know several good girls who empower their workers by delegating special projects to them but feel guilty turning over the crummy stuff, and thus end up doing that themselves.
And let's face it. You want to be thought of as Superwoman. If you delegate part of the work, you may no longer be viewed as the girl who can do it all.
Warning sign that you are wording on projects that you should be giving to someone else: You frequently hear yourself say:
• “I was here all night.”
THE GUTSY GIRL'S THREE-STEP SYSTEM FOR DOING ONLY WHAT'S ESSENTIAL
Now that