Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [63]
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