Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do by Kate White Page A
Authors: Kate White
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efforts.
To prevent this you have to frame your turnaround in people's minds. Send out memos that keep people posted on the changes and their impact. When you talk to co-workers, use phrases like, “Thanks to our turnaround, we can …” And let the numbers get out there, too. If there's an 11 percent increase in customer sales, let everyone know.
As soon as DeLibero took over New Jersey Transit she began issuing quarterly reports to employees that she called Vital Signs. She gave plenty of facts and figures detailing the progress she was making.
CHAPTER FIVE
Strategy #3: A Gutsy Girl Does Only What's Essential
I f you're a good girl, it goes without saying that you work hard for your money. After all, you want to prove yourself, get an A-plus on important projects, and please those who matter. The sure way to do that seems to be to work your tail off. Chances are there are plenty of lunch hours when you find yourself at your desk with a tuna salad and melba toast and plenty of evenings when you're the one who turns out the lights. You feel a lot of satisfaction (and yes, admit it, even a little smugness) in working harder than many of your colleagues, though sometimes that satisfaction turns to irritation when you realize that often you seem to get stuck with all the work. Just once you'd like to be heading out the door early on a Friday. But you know that in the long run you will be well rewarded for all your hard, hard work.
Well, I've got bad news. Despite what you've been encouraged to believe, all your hard work is no guarantee of rewards or success.
Okay, okay, just like me you've read all those profiles of top executives in Fortune, in which they play that one-upmanship game about the hours they put in—there's the 60-hour workweek and the 80-hour workweek and the 100-plus-hour workweek. Sure, some jobs do involve a mind-boggling number of hours, but I've come to see that many good girls get caught up in working long hours purely for work's sake, not because it's really necessary. They devote more attention to some projects than they have to, or handle certain assignments that they should actually give to someone else.
The trouble with working your tail off this way isn't simply that you end up without clean panty hose, a decent social life, a knowledge of twentieth-century fiction, or anything in your fridge other than expired low-fat yogurt. If you're creating endless make-work for yourself, you don't have time to focus on your gutsy-girl plan, on making something happen that's all yours—and that will make you a star.
A gutsy girl knows that the hours she clocks are no reflection of how good a job she's done. The secret is to stop trying to do everything and start concentrating only on the essential steps that will allow you to achieve your goal. Anything more is a waste of valuable time and energy.
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
To prevent this you have to frame your turnaround in people's minds. Send out memos that keep people posted on the changes and their impact. When you talk to co-workers, use phrases like, “Thanks to our turnaround, we can …” And let the numbers get out there, too. If there's an 11 percent increase in customer sales, let everyone know.
As soon as DeLibero took over New Jersey Transit she began issuing quarterly reports to employees that she called Vital Signs. She gave plenty of facts and figures detailing the progress she was making.
CHAPTER FIVE
Strategy #3: A Gutsy Girl Does Only What's Essential
I f you're a good girl, it goes without saying that you work hard for your money. After all, you want to prove yourself, get an A-plus on important projects, and please those who matter. The sure way to do that seems to be to work your tail off. Chances are there are plenty of lunch hours when you find yourself at your desk with a tuna salad and melba toast and plenty of evenings when you're the one who turns out the lights. You feel a lot of satisfaction (and yes, admit it, even a little smugness) in working harder than many of your colleagues, though sometimes that satisfaction turns to irritation when you realize that often you seem to get stuck with all the work. Just once you'd like to be heading out the door early on a Friday. But you know that in the long run you will be well rewarded for all your hard, hard work.
Well, I've got bad news. Despite what you've been encouraged to believe, all your hard work is no guarantee of rewards or success.
Okay, okay, just like me you've read all those profiles of top executives in Fortune, in which they play that one-upmanship game about the hours they put in—there's the 60-hour workweek and the 80-hour workweek and the 100-plus-hour workweek. Sure, some jobs do involve a mind-boggling number of hours, but I've come to see that many good girls get caught up in working long hours purely for work's sake, not because it's really necessary. They devote more attention to some projects than they have to, or handle certain assignments that they should actually give to someone else.
The trouble with working your tail off this way isn't simply that you end up without clean panty hose, a decent social life, a knowledge of twentieth-century fiction, or anything in your fridge other than expired low-fat yogurt. If you're creating endless make-work for yourself, you don't have time to focus on your gutsy-girl plan, on making something happen that's all yours—and that will make you a star.
A gutsy girl knows that the hours she clocks are no reflection of how good a job she's done. The secret is to stop trying to do everything and start concentrating only on the essential steps that will allow you to achieve your goal. Anything more is a waste of valuable time and energy.
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
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