Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [86]
The boss you have also makes a critical difference. “The best boss for a working mother, our studies show, is a working mother,” says Culbreth. “The next best is a man whose wife is a working mother. After that, it goes downhill. These are only generalizations, but it's helpful to be aware of them.”
What about everyday issues that working mothers face? Should you keep your kids’ pictures on your desk? Should you admit that you're tired because your four-year-old had the croup and you spent almost the entire night monitoring the humidifier and trying to help her stop barking like a seal? A lot of that depends on your own workplace, and you're going to have to learn to be your own gauge. Culbreth says that in many workplaces today being a parent is no longer viewed as a negative, but as a sign that you're a well-rounded person— and that means parents are able to be more candid. But proceed cautiously. It never hurts to err on the side of maximum discretion.
In some respects, I feel that worrying about how many pictures of your kids you should keep on your desk doesn't get to the heart of the matter. All your boss is really concerned about is how commuted you are to your job, and you must aggressively let her see that you are and reassure her if she's in doubt. If, for instance, you leave at 5:00, as I do, let your boss know that you put in another hour or more after your kids go to bed.
RUMORS, GOSSIP, AND LIES, OH MY!
There is one other big way you can get sabotaged at work and it's getting worse these days. People will break your confidence or they will spread rumors about you, both true and untrue.
Everything about the state of discretion in the workplace can be summed up in this remark an acquaintance made to me. She had just had an interview with a woman recently named editor of a magazine. My acquaintance mentioned that the new editor planned to fire many of the employees at the magazine.
“I'm surprised she would confide that to you,” I remarked. “Isn't she worried that you would tell people?”
“Well, she asked me to keep it confidential,” she said. “And other than you, my two roommates, and my boyfriend, I haven't told a soul.”
That is exactly how you can expect people to respond if you ask them to keep a secret.
A good girl trusts people. A gutsy girl knows that you can never, ever completely trust anyone. Never tell a secret to anyone without knowing that there is every chance it will be betrayed.
And what if people simply choose to start a rumor about you?
Frankie Sue del Pappa, the attorney general of Nevada, who is known as one of the gutsiest women in politics, says that you must shut a rumor down. “There was a time when it might have been best to leave it alone. If you drew too much attention to it, you might make it worse. But those days are over. It will snowball until you address it and say that it's wrong.”
CHAPTER TEN
Strategy #8: A Gutsy Girl Trusts Her Instincts
Though I had been the editor-in-chief of two magazines before I went to McCall's, in many respects I'd been playing in the minor leagues and was now moving up to the majors. Child and Working Woman had 250,000 and 900,000 readers respectively; McCall's had 5 million. On the newsstand Child and Working Woman each sold considerably under 100,000 each month, whereas McCall's average sale was about 400,000.
One of the scariest pieces of information thrown my way the first week on the job at McCall's was that the newsstand sales could fluctuate by several hundred thousand copies each month, depending on who and what was on the cover. The wrong instinct about a celebrity could cost thousands of dollars. It seemed hard