Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [78]
In some cases peers will be threatened by your very existence, by the simple fact that you're smart, energetic, and could end up getting the promotion they want. After I began writing major features at Glamour, one of the hot writers in the department, who was just a few years older than I, took me aside and said she had something important to tell me. She said she'd been thinking about my future and knew exactly what I should do. I sat there with a little grin on my face, knowing that she was about to say something sweet to me, perhaps that I was destined to be an important magazine feature writer. But to my astonishment she announced, “I think you should consider running for Congress.”
Later, I realized I should have been flattered. She didn't just want me out of the magazine, she wanted me out of the industry.
Sometimes a peer feels threatened by a specific move you make that bugs the hell out of them. I once had a terrific relationship with a peer, until, that is, I was awarded a special project by our boss. From that moment on she seemed supremely irritated by everything I did and actually presented two ideas I had shared privately with her at a meeting—as her own.
Threatened peers may respond by turning cool on you, stealing your ideas, belittling you in front of people, boxing you out of activities, or launching a back-stabbing campaign like the one that happened to me.
With more and more companies setting up team projects and team decision-making, an incompetent peer can also pose a danger to you. She may fail to perform a function effectively that has a direct bearing on what you do.
THE #I RULE OF OFFICE POLITICS
Everything there is to say about dealing with office saboteurs can be boiled down to one simple principle: You must do something. I say simple, and, yet, that's exactly what a good girl doesn't want to hear. As a good girl, you most likely hate confrontation. It's awkward, it's embarrassing, it's terrifying. In some cases you may end up in a state of denial, convincing yourself that a situation isn't all that bad. Or you may recognize that you're under attack, but simply choose not to take action. New York City management consultant Karen Berg says that she often consults with women on how to confront a co-worker over a sticky situation. They'll work out a strategy, agree on a plan, but when she asks two weeks later if the woman followed through, the answer, she says, is often, “Well uhhhh…”
Once a good girl makes a decision that she's not going to take action, an interesting dynamic begins to take place: She convinces herself that not acting actually was the best strategy Sometimes, she tells herself, its best to allow things to sort themselves out.
She may go so far as to talk the situation over with a friend, which, unfortunately, creates the false sense that she's done something about it. One recent study on women and anger showed that, despite myths to the contrary, women don't suppress their anger about situations with spouses and co-workers. They do, however, fail to express it directly. Only 9.6 percent of the women in the study said they expressed it directly to the person who caused it. About 81 percent expressed it to a third person.
As a former good girl, I know how easy it is to convince yourself that a bad situation will go away on its own if you just let it. The truth is that unconfronted issues fester, intensify, and sometimes even explode. Also, when you allow someone to get away with bad behavior, you give them permission to do it again. Poachers will poach again, back-stabbers will stab again, and the person who stole one little idea will begin to plot a million-dollar heist.
I had a funny little lesson once in how things only get worse if you try to ignore them. The editor-in-chief I was working for at the time invited me to join a monthly planning meeting that she and two other editors participated in. It was clear right away that each player had her own “seat” at these meetings. The editor-in-chief occupied a chair, the executive editor sat on the short end of