Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [92]
Why does a good girl think this way? Psychotherapist Marjorie Lapp says that a good girl lends to believe that the same principles that apply in a friendship apply at work. When someone's behavior appears malicious or incongruous, she gives that person the benefit of the doubt because she doesn't expect unfairness, mean-spiritedness, or betrayal.
Or, Lapp says, the good girl wonders if she has done something wrong, which only serves to distract her from noticing what's really essential. A good-girl friend of mine told me, “I once came across two people whispering in a stairwell and automatically assumed they were whispering something negativeabout me. A month later the company was sold—that's what all the whispering was about. While some people were getting their résumés together because they'd picked up on the clues, I'd been wondering, Why don't they like me?
Of course, some things are meaningless or coincidental, so you don't want to overreact. I went to work once for a very mercurial woman who had previously employed a friend of mine. My friend's advice: “Sometimes she's going to seem really cool to you, and you're going to panic. But give it twenty-four hours. She might just have had a bad haircut.”
Because I tend to err on the side of seeing the rosy view, I've adopted these tactics:
I. Look a Second Time at Anything You just Dismissed
The moment you hear yourself pooh-pooh anything (“Oh, he's probably just in a grouchy mood,” or “I'm sure that will never happen”), immediately backtrack and review the event or remark. What could it mean? What are some of the implications? What's the worst possibility? I know that sounds paranoid, but because your good-girl tendency may be to rationalize when an event makes the hairs on the back of your neck go up, it's smart to revisit it and get your fears “on the record” in your own mind.
2. Play Connect the Dots
Years ago I read a quote in which someone who worked for a company that sold educated hunches to businesses explained how he came to some of his conclusions. He said that he combed hundreds of trade and technical journals for early, isolated clues that, when connected, conveyed an “unintended message.” I thought that was good advice for anyone marketing products to consumers, but it struck me later that it was also terrific guidance for assessing people on a gut level.
One isolated incident may not tell you anything definitive about someone, but if you're paying attention, you may be able to see a pattern emerge in two or three small incidents. This works especially well for good girls. If your natural inclination is to dismiss a warning sign, playing connect the dots forces you to see a pattern.
I once had a boss who suddenly seemed to be out of the office more than he was in. Whenever I dropped by his office he was at a convention in the Caribbean or a conference in Dallas or whatever. The trips could all have been classified as “junkets” rather than pure taking-care-of-business trips. I saw a little red flag go up, but I dismissed it when I heard him talking about how productive one of the trips had been. Then, a few weeks later, we had a catch-up lunch. As I talked about some of the exciting new opportunities on the horizon, he did something I had never seen him do in a meeting with me: He yawned.
Now, that yawn alone might not have told me anything. It might have simply meant he was overworked—or I was being a bore. But that yawn along with the junkets was an unintended message—this guy had lost interest, had mentally checked out of the organization. And I knew at that moment