Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (24 page)

TRUST YOUR GUT—BUT DON'T ADMIT IT

Unless you're in a fairly high-ranking position, do not say you arrived at a decision because of “intuition” or a “gut feeling.” Only the most creative bosses will appreciate such a skill. It's generally better to have people assume you have fantastic resources and a brilliantly analytical mind.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Strategy #9: A Gutsy Girl Takes Smart Risks

I
f you asked me to describe the biggest risk I've taken in my career, I wouldn't have to think for a second. It was accepting the job of editor-in-chief of
Working Woman
when I was seven and a half months’ pregnant.

Why, you might ask, would a woman in her right mind accept a challenging new job when she was less than two months from delivering a baby? Granted, it was wonderful proof that there was at least one enlightened man in the world—the one who hired me. But if you look beyond the small step for the betterment of working women, what you're left with is the fact that there is only so much one woman can do in twenty-four hours. How could I have invited that much stress into my life?

Well, the truth is that when I went on the job interview, I didn't have any serious interest in the position and I
never
assumed I'd be considered for it. I was not only pregnant, but I'd been editing
Child,
a parenting magazine, hardly the foundation for a position as editor-in-chief of a business publication. But several people had recommended me to the owner of
Working Woman
and I'd said yes to the interview just for the opportunity to meet him. He was known for being an entrepreneurial wizard, and I figured he'd be a great contact for later down the road.

Well, as so often happens when there's nothing to lose, I performed terrifically, the way Olympic figure skaters do during the closing night exhibition
after
all the medals have been awarded. I was relaxed, loose, daring. (I also think the pregnancy hormones coursing through my system provided me with extra oomph.) When the owner asked what I would do with
Working Woman,
I found myself totally inspired and energized. I pulled ideas out of the air, I painted a thrilling future for the magazine, and I even jumped to my feet several times to make a point. I did everything, actually, but perform a number from
Cats.
With nothing at stake, I gave a great interview—and much to my shock was offered the job three days later.

The night I accepted the position, I lay in bed ruminating about the risk I was taking. What if I delivered early? What if the baby had a three-month case of colic like my first child had? But over the next few days those risks began to pale in comparison to another one. You see, as I started to take a closer look at the magazine (compared to the perfunctory glance I'd given it before the interview), I realized I didn't “get it” or relate to it on any level. It was filled with dense, specialized articles like “How Leasing Employees Saves Time and Money.” “Sweet Success in Sales Automation,” and “How to Keep Your Finger on the Pulse of Productivity.” The reader obviously spoke some kind of secret language that I had no familiarity with. I began to feel this sickening sense that I had bitten off more than I could chew. How could I generate ideas on subject matter I knew nothing about? It was as if I'd accepted the job as editor of
Astrophysics
magazine, or, worse, had taken a job
as
an astrophysicist. I felt like I was living the nightmare of the actor who finds herself in a play for which she has never learned the lines.

It was my husband who helped me see the light, as I sat there bemoaning my fate several days before I started.

“Its just new-job anxiety,” he said.

“No, it isn't,” I snapped. “I can't do this job. I know nothing about the subject matter, nothing about the reader.”

“How can you say that?” he asked, astonished. “Aren't
you
a working woman?”

I thought a moment and then began to laugh. He was right, of course. I might be in a more “artsy” line of work than the middle managers in the target audience, but nonetheless I supervised people, oversaw a budget, hired and fired. I wasn't nearly the outsider I'd convinced myself I was.

That day I reached a new conclusion about risk: 85 percent of the terror a risk generates depends on the perspective you choose to have.

WHY GOOD GIRLS HATE RISKY BUSINESS

Taking risks is an essential part of success in business. A survey of 600 professional men and women at large companies by Wick and Company, a management consulting firm, found that 60 percent defined their crucial developmental experiences as “being at risk in a novel or unsupervised environment.”

A risk could mean pushing the envelope and attempting something on the cutting edge in your approach to your job. It could also mean taking on a new job that isn't one notch above the one you have, but two or three.

Without risk taking, you can never have any major success. Frank Farley, a psychologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin, who has studied both risk taking and the elements of life success, says the two are completely intertwined. “All my research has pointed to the fact that success equals self-knowledge plus motivation—and self-knowledge comes from risk taking.”

Good girls feel uncomfortable with risk taking, but is it any wonder?

From the moment girls are born, their parents may attempt to protect them from the world. According to pyschologist Dr. Allana Elovson, research shows that when baby girls start to crawl, they are more likely than boys to be discouraged from being daring in their explorations.

In school, girls may feel inhibited about risk taking. According to the Sadkers, boys are allowed more exploratory behavior, the kind that teaches you that there is treasure to be found in uncharted territory. Boys, say the Sadkers, are asked to demonstrate in science class three out of four times. They're more likely to be asked questions that call for thought, rather than simply a black or white answer. Teachers also wait longer for them to answer, which encourages them to mentally play with ideas. Many girls grow up encouraged to believe that it's better to be safe than sorry, that getting their dresses dirty is the worst sin in the world.

There may be something else hindering you from making bold moves. A study in the mid-eighties reported that taking risks and possibly failing was stressful for many women because they viewed themselves as operating in a “glass house.” If you're the only woman at your level in a company or one of the few in your area, the risks you take—and the failures you experience as an inevitable by-product of some of your risk taking—are going to be far more scrutinized. Your risk taking may be less tolerated or less indulged than that of the guy sitting across the hall.

THE LITTLE SECRET TO BEING FEARLESS

Now, I'd like to be able to say that I have five pointers that will make you one of the world's gutsiest risk takers starting tomorrow. Unfortunately, that's not the case. According to Dr. farley, how big a risk taker you are depends to a large degree on your biological makeup. Some people have a genetic factor that enables them—actually compels them—to take big risks, to go way beyond the status quo. He calls them Type T (thrill-seeking) personalities. Its the Type Ts who shape the world because they are the great experimenters, the people who go up the mountain, across the ocean, into the jungle. It's not only nearly impossible to squelch this type of personality, its also impossible to develop it if you weren't born with the right genes. At the other end of the spectrum are what Dr. Farley calls little is, people who get nervous just driving to the next town.

Don t get discouraged. Though you can't turn yourself into a major risk taker, if you fall somewhere in the middle ground between Big Ts and little is, you can improve your comfort level with taking risks and your ability to handle them. Whereas it's hard to squelch a Big T, people in the middle zone can have their risk-taking instincts flattened by the experiences they have in their families and in school. If you stood up and challenged the math theorem, only to be shot down by the teacher, you were probably gun shy the next time you had an adventurous thought. Dr. Farley says, however, that even as an adult, you can find your way back to some of your natural instincts.

The secret is to practice. “When you take a risk, it's very reinforcing,” says Farley. “There's a sense of exhilaration, empowerment, that feeling of ‘I did it.’” In other words, if you're a good girl who hasn't tried much risk taking, put your toe in the water Once you get over the jolt and experience the refreshing feel of it, you're going to start thinking about getting your thighs wet, too.

THE RIGHT WAY TO TAKE A RISK

Of course, that wonderful sense of exhilaration and empowerment won't happen if you lake risks and repeatedly land hard on your derrière. That only reinforces your instincts to play it safe. What you need before you take any risk is a four-point plan of protection:

1. Give a Risk a Different Name

Even if you commit to going forward on a project that holds plenty of risks, if you remain anxious about it, that anxiety will turn you into an unfortunate expert on late-night infomercials and possibly stifle your decision making at key turning points in the project.

That's why you've got to try to see the experience from a new angle. Dr. Farley stresses that “relabeling” a risk can be an effective way of feeling more in control.

That's essentially what my husband did for me when I went to
Working Woman.
By asking, “Aren't you a working woman?” he changed my position: I was no longer “out of my element,” but rather a perfectly appropriate choice. From there I also began to see that my ignorance about the world of management could be used as a strength. I could look at the magazine as a brand-new reader would. In fact, there were plenty of readers who were aspirants rather than successful managers, and much of the “managementese” in the magazine was probably foreign to them as well.

And, you know, something interesting began to happen once I changed my perspective. As I looked at the magazine purely as a new reader, much of what in my panic had seemed foreign and impenetrable now struck me as simply dry and dull. I began to think about how much fun it would be to introduce features that were not only informative but also had some sass. I assigned articles like “The Nine Worst Business Books of All Time (Plus the Ten Best)” and “SEX … Now That We Have Your Attention, Here's How to Get Everybody Else's.”

So come up with a new name for the precipice you are standing on.

•  It could be terrifying—or it could be challenging.

•  It could be foreign—or it could be intriguing.

•  It could expose your ignorance—or your ability to learn.

2. Know Exactly What You Have to Lose

Every gutsy girl I've talked to about risk says that one of the first things she does before even thinking about taking a leap is to calculate what's at stake. Is it $30,000 or $300,000? A major client or a minor one? And then how much is that loss going to matter to her department and company's future—and her personal future as well?

Several years ago I had the chance to meet Dr. Pamela Lip-kin, a very successful facial plastic surgeon in New York City and one of the few women in the field (no, I haven't done anything yet). Dr. Lipkin says that her approach to assessing risk—and in her field there's plenty of it—boils down to a simple phrase: “Can I live with whatever happens?”

She not only asks herself this question in regard to each procedure she's about to perform, but she also posed it to herself when she had to make a critical choice as she tried to build her practice. The standard way to start a medical practice, she says, is to use family money to buy one or else develop one through the help of the old boy network. Neither approach was available to Lipkin: she had no money, and it was clear that she would never be invited to join the club. So she made her mark by doing something that was taboo in the business. She did revision work—fixes of other doctors’ botched jobs—and she
talked
about it.

“When a patient's unhappy with plastic surgery,” says Dr. Lipkin, “she may go to other doctors to see if they can help her, but she'll never find anyone who will say, ‘This is bad.’ It's a boys’ club and they won't admit the work wasn't good. Instead, they'll say something like, ‘It didn't heal well.’ When these patients started to come to me, I offered them something no one else would. I'd say, ‘Yeah, I can fix it,’ though I would be honest and tell them it wouldn't look as good as it would have if I'd done it originally.”

Taking revision cases and talking openly about it was a major risk, one that meant burning her bridges, says Lipkin. “Then there was a magazine article about me called ‘The Miracle Worker,’ and it was like an invitation to declare war on a small country. It annoyed every doctor in town.”

And yet, Lipkin knew that those people weren't ever going to help her anyway. She looked at how much being “the revision doctor” could hurt her—and she knew she could live with it.

3. Take Smart Risks Rather Than Stupid Ones

This is where you get to take advantage of that good-girl tendency to do lots and lots of homework. Though you don't want to be one of those oil wildcatters who never gets around to drilling, gathering all the facts is your best form of protection. A gutsy girl never just wings it.

Gail Evans, the dynamic senior VP at CNN/Turner Broadcasting, is the epitome of the smart risk taker. She helped create a central booking operation for CNN to handle the hundreds of guests each week (“from prime ministers to people talking about sex and the single girl”) so that different shows wouldn't all be scrambling for the same guests when there was a major news event to cover.

“My ability to take risks,” says Evans, “has been greatly enhanced by living every day in front of Ted Turner, someone who has risked the ball game a hundred times and never gotten caught up in worrying about the people who said it couldn't be done. But at the same time, I never do anything by the seat of my pants. I make sure I'm better informed than anyone else. My fail-safe systems are redundant. If the booker wants to put on someone who is an expert on nuclear widgets, the researcher talks to him, too. Everyone is interviewed by two people. When you're trying to be creative, to take risks, you need to cover all your bases, to operate from a solid foundation.”