Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (19 page)

As his female colleagues had unhappily unpacked their boxes, he had been busy getting the lay of the land and greasing the palms of workmen. He had managed to secure a freestanding bookcase that he used to wall in his end of the room, as well as a clubby little couch. By the end of the day he had created a comfy office all to himself. It almost appeared as if he were the boss and the female editors were the typing pool.

Never assume that just because no one has grabbed something that it's not yours for the taking. If there's an empty seat next to the big cheese at a meeting and no one is sitting there, go ahead, help yourself.

CHAPTER
NINE

Strategy #7: A Gutsy Girl Faces Trouble Head-On

T
he first time anyone tried to sabotage me at work was a chilling experience, in part because it seemed to come out of nowhere—and from a person I liked.

I had hired this woman myself, for a special project, and because I was overloaded with work, I gave her plenty of autonomy. I did, however, pop into her office periodically to see how things were progressing. She was pleasant and smart and we got along well. Eventually the project came to an end and my boss and I decided that we would absorb her into the main operation, where she would be reporting directly to me.

That's when the trouble started. She didn't like having to answer to me, perhaps because we were the same age, perhaps because she thought she was more capable than I was. Whatever the reason, she bristled when I top-edited her work and she was snippy to me at staff meetings. I decided not to say anything to her, convincing myself that her discontent would burn off in a few weeks as she got used to the change in procedure. But things only got worse. I heard through the grapevine that she was complaining about me to the younger people on the staff, some of whom suddenly developed a weird coolness toward me. A little voice inside told me that I had to take the bull by the horns, and yet I was afraid if I confronted her she would simply accuse me of being paranoid.

One day, two people on the sales staff asked me out to lunch and said that they had a serious situation they had to speak to me about. They explained that this woman had now taken her complaints about me outside of the editorial department. “She's trashing you to anyone who will listen,” one of them said. “And because she seems so sweet, people assume she must have a case.”

Needless to say, I didn't feel much enthusiasm for my chicken paillard after their revelation. In fact, I lost my appetite for the rest of the day. The problem was not only bigger than I had imagined, it seemed bigger than I could contain. Obviously, it had flared up when I began putting “controls” on her, but it was surely more complicated than that—or else she would have simply come to me or my boss and complained. Bad-mouthing me to everyone indicated that there were other issues. Was she jealous of me, angry that I had the bigger job and she didn't? And even if I could now find a way to deal with her rage effectively, she had already done some serious damage to my reputation. As they say, when someone throws mud, a little of that mud always sticks to you, even if you didn't deserve to get hit.

That night, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I did allow myself one moment of consolation. I told myself that at least I would never be so naive again. At least I was now armed with the fact that as you go through your career, you are bound to work occasionally with someone who will try to get you.

Unfortunately I couldn't have been more wrong.

You see, what I have learned in subsequent years is that my 200
A.M.
revelation was a good-girl way of seeing the world. What a gutsy girl realizes is that there are not simply a few bad people out there who will try to derail you. Every single person who crosses your path is a potential saboteur. You must be ever vigilant—and when you spot trouble, you must confront it.

WHY EVEN NICE CO-WORKERS BECOME BARRACUDAS

With so much emphasis on teamwork these days, you may wonder how I could have such a negative attitude. Aren't we all working together now, cheering each other on, taking pride in each other's accomplishments? That does happen, of course, but let's not let all the happy talk mislead us. In addition to the fact that there are more than a few real nasty types out there disguised as team members, some of the nicest, well-meaning people will undermine you if the right conditions are created in the work ecosystem. And they may not even be aware on a conscious level of what they're doing.

There are two conditions under which people are most likely to become your saboteurs: (1) they're incompetent at the job they're currently doing; or (2) they feel threatened by you.

The Boss Saboteur

During my twenties, whenever a friend of mine complained about her boss and used the sentence “I think she's threatened by me,” I always reacted as if she had told me that a UFO had landed in her yard. I'd try, as a good friend, to sound concerned and supportive, but part of me was always highly skeptical. How could an experienced, accomplished boss feel endangered by a twenty-five-year-old, even if she
was a
go-getter? Then one day I experienced the same sentiment about a boss of mine—and I silently asked forgiveness of those friends I'd classified as delusional.

If higher-ups are going to you directly or responding more enthusiastically to your ideas than your boss's, he can indeed feel threatened by you, but it's not always as straightforward as him sitting up nights in his BarcaLounger downing gin and wondering when management is going to kick him out of his nice big office and award it to you. What he may experience instead is a seeping discomfort or irritation. Even if he feels totally secure in his position, your talent and energy can make him question his own, making him feel like an imposter who may one day be exposed.

How does his fear manifest itself? He may keep you out of meetings you should be part of, co-opt your ideas, cut you down to size in front of your peers, and limit your access to those higher up. A thirty-four-year-old friend of mine has recently had this problem with her fifty-four-year-old boss. She took over an area in the company that he only loosely supervised and as soon as she started to shine, he began to reduce her power and steal her thunder. She was due to make a presentation of her department's accomplishments to top management and her boss suddenly announced that he would give the first half of the presentation. My friend had no choice but to go along, and they rehearsed together over the next week. The day arrived and the boss delivered his half of the presentation. My friend started to rise for her portion, and then watched, with jaw dropped, as her boss simply barreled along, giving her part of the presentation as well. Later, when she asked for an explanation, he told her he wanted to spare her the stress.

A boss can also sabotage you with his incompetence. A bozo boss casts a halo that can make you appear incapable, too. A boss who is talented in his field but lousy at delegating will threaten your chances of developing expertise you critically need.

The Subordinate Saboteur

In many respects subordinates can be the most dangerous saboteurs because we are less likely to suspect them or worry that they endanger us. After all, we have “authority” over them, and thus we shouldn't have to be concerned.

The most obvious danger is from incompetent players on your staff. They, of course, not only jeopardize matters by making mistakes and mishandling critical situations, they also suck the energy out of you and force
you
to pick up the slack they create. Good girls seem to have a special blindspot for incompetent employees because they hope for the best with people and then don't want to do anything “mean.” I once had a good girl on my staff who hired a person under her who turned out to be a disaster, and in the end I lost as much faith in the good girl as I did in her hire. First there were the months of denial, in which the good girl kept saying that she knew her staff member would blossom as she became more familiar with the process. Then, once the problem had been acknowledged, there was the procrastination, I think because the good girl didn't really warn to do the dirty work. By the time the incompetent member had been transferred to another area, the good girl had sustained almost as much damage in my eyes.

Your subordinates can also feel threatened by you, though that's something we rarely think of. There are a few obvious situations. You take over a department and everyone there seems to hate you for what you might do to the status quo. But your employees will also feel anxious and threatened if you fail to give them adequate responsibility and autonomy or you offer no sense of direction. They will then sabotage you by performing poorly, complaining about you to one another as well as other people in the company—or resigning in the middle of your biggest crunch.

The Peer Saboteur

Peers, to me, are the trickiest saboteurs because our relationships with them are less formalized and we don't have any real control over what they do. Unlike with subordinates, you lack the right to challenge their behavior, and unlike with bosses, it's not expected that they might tell you what's on their minds.

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 an L-shaped couch and the third person, who was on my level at the magazine, sat on the long end of the L. The obvious place for me was on the other half of the long end of the couch. But my peer had positioned herself more than midway down the couch, with all her papers between her and the other editor, so there was only a small space for me at the end. I took the seat anyway, since there was nowhere else, and I figured that once the meeting got going she'd scoot down. But she didn't. I rationalized that she hadn't known I was coming and that at least at the next meeting she'd leave me more room, but no, it didn't happen. In fact, as the months went by, she seemed to take up even
more
room. By the fourth meeting she was saving me space the width of a lasagna noodle. I had everything I could do to keep from falling off the couch.

You're probably wondering why I didn't do anything about this ludicrous situation. Well, I eventually I did, but not for six months, and that's because I kept telling myself it would “work itself out.” It wasn't until I sat there one day with one cheek on the couch and one in midair that I realized that it was not only unlikely to get better, but there was every chance it would continue until the day I found myself sprawled on the floor.

What did I finally do? I stopped being a total wimp, got to the next meeting early, and plopped myself down in the middle of the couch. I can't tell you how shocked this woman looked when she saw me there, but after that there weren't any more “squeeze plays.” Looking back, it's a pretty silly episode overall, but it drove home the message for me that things, unfortunately, just don't go away. You've got to take action, no matter how distasteful it may seem.