Part 6 (1/2)
Women often take those peripheral chairs, because we think that the table is for the boss and the key people, or those who would be disgruntled sitting anywhere else. In other words, the men.
It's time that we realize that if we want to be considered loyal and productive team players, we have to sit at the table with the Big Guys.
The power with which a person presents herself is quite different if she is sitting at the table or at the far end of the room next to the bookcases. No matter how great your knowledge, sitting in the bleachers makes you look subordinate. The boss is far less apt to ask for your opinion if he has to s.h.i.+ft in his seat to see you and strain his ears to hear you.
THE PROBLEM: You feel uncomfortable sitting at the table, particularly when there aren't enough chairs for everyone.
WHAT TO DO: The difference between you and that guy who scurried past you to sit in a prime location is self-confidence.
Early on guys learn that they belong at the table, and they're comfortable fighting to stay there. Being visible is half the battle. You can't play if you can't be seen.
Don't let a lack of self-confidence damage your career. Catch yourself: Are you thinking that only the big shots can sit at the boss's table? Are you thinking that you're taking the place of someone smarter? What if you're asked to contribute, and you're exposed as an imposter?
To circ.u.mvent these hurtful thoughts, women often pretend it doesn't matter where we sit. Scores of them have told me that if it makes the guys so happy, why fight? To defer on this point becomes a badge of honor-we don't need to show off.
It's not showing off. It's making your presence felt-and you should come to work every day fully present.
This isn't to say you should just grab whatever seat you can at a regular weekly meeting. People may have customary places at the table and such a move could be perceived as an obnoxious power play. But you'll go to many meetings with no de facto a.s.signed seats, meetings where your knowledge is as important as anyone else's. When that happens, simply gather your confidence, march up to the table, and sit.
GAME HINT: Take your place at the table, metaphorically speaking, in every aspect of work. For instance, at a company party, don't let the guys monopolize the clients. The boss is constantly looking around the room to see who's moving the ball, and if he sees you ensconced in the corner, safe and comfortable with a friend, you lose points.
Make your presence known everywhere. At a business lecture for a hundred people, for example, sit in the first few rows of the auditorium. We walk into these rooms as though we were attending a distant friend's wedding and a back row seat is the best we deserve. Instead, make it a rule to act like a member of the wedding party rather than a guest.
By sitting in the front row, you'll make contact with the speaker and the subject matter, too. When you sit on the periphery, you take in a peripheral amount of information. In the front row, you're forced to listen.
At the same time, you'll be getting used to the limelight. Co-workers will see you up front and will be persuaded to reconsider their image of you.
KEEP IN MIND: If there are twelve seats at the table, and traditionally two of those have belonged to women, don't feel that you have to sit in one of them. Don't get caught in the trap of competing only for what is seen as a woman's place, job, or t.i.tle. We won't try out for every position on the team until we believe that every position can be ours.
14
Laugh.
SITUATION: It's a tough meeting, and the tension in the room is thick. Then one of the guys tells a joke-it's not very funny, and most everyone has heard it before.
HIS MOVE: He laughs.
HER MOVE: She doesn't.
Laugh. Grin. Smile: anything-anything at all. Guys learned long ago that humor can cut the tension in any situation.
Unfortunately for us, the kind of wise-cracking, back-slapping, knee-smacking humor that breaks the guys up is seldom the kind we've learned to enjoy. Our humor leans more toward the observational, the situational. What's more, we don't tend to joke with each other the way men do-at least, not when we're growing up. We don't even learn to initiate jokes. I remember once hearing comedian Phyllis Diller say that the major problem she had breaking into stand-up comedy was that all the bookers told her flat out, ”Women can't tell a joke.”
Think about it. We're much more likely to giggle about that strange-looking guy who monopolized the boss's wife at the office party than we are to announce when we have something to say and demand everyone's attention. And in a tough meeting at the office, pithy little observations don't always cut it.
Of course, there are a great deal of not-so-humorous men, but for the most part they can still tell a joke to break the tension. I have met few women who can do that.
It's not really our fault. We can be so focused on doing a good job, so concerned with showing the guys we can do the work, that we're not relaxed enough to introduce a little levity.
We also don't realize that the laughing has less to do with telling the actual joke than with creating camaraderie. When you read about a retired football player reminiscing about the game, you understand it's not the plays or the noise of the crowd he misses-it's the friends.h.i.+p.
THE PROBLEM: The guys at the office think women are too driven, too serious, to have a sense of humor.
WHAT TO DO: Don't take yourself too seriously. As former Was.h.i.+ngton Redskins football player John Riggins once said to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at a formal dinner, ”Loosen up, Sandy baby.” Just because you don't know how to tell a joke a guy's way doesn't mean you can't be funny and engaging. So maybe you don't get the big belly laugh. At least your male colleagues won't mutter that you're another humorless female. I don't think anyone who is totally humorless can make it high up the ladder.
I know I'm not a joke teller and never will be, but whenever I do get a laugh, the guys come up to me later with a surprised expression and say, ”I didn't realize that you were funny.” They say it as though I were a newly discovered subspecies: h.o.m.o Sapiens, Female Humorous.
There's one man I've worked with for years who, every time I make him smile, says, ”You were funny again.” That in itself has become our little running joke. (I said these jokes can be small, as long as you're a part of them.) Even if you can't tell a funny story, let your a.s.sociates know you appreciate theirs. Sometimes that may mean laughing at things you don't find very humorous. But if you're a mother, think how many times you've laughed at one of your child's terrible jokes. I must have heard the same knockknock jokes a thousand times. And I always laugh at them, because I love my kids and grandkids and I know it's important they feel my approval.
If you're going to be a spoilsport, people won't feel comfortable around you. Yet all you had to do was smile pleasantly when someone told you a joke, even if you heard it four times before.
GAME HINT: Dirty jokes. No for both s.e.xes. When women try to be humorous in a quasi-locker room kind of way, we usually end up making ourselves, and the guys, uneasy. I've yet to hear a female colleague tell a good off-color joke. This may change, but for the time being, if it's tough for a woman to tell a joke, it's almost impossible for her to tell a dirty joke. There is too much s.e.xual tension, too many rules, too much political correctness in the workplace. The guys who have known me for years are always asking me what topics to avoid when they talk to female a.s.sociates they don't know well. The one thing I recommend: Stay away from anything with s.e.xual overtones.
SIX THINGS MEN CAN DO AT WORK THAT WOMEN CAN'T.
To be somebody, a woman does not have to be more like a man, but has to be more of a woman.
DR. SALLY E. SHAYWITZ, PHYSICIAN AND WRITER.
THERE'S A FAMOUS DUET IN THE MUSICAL Annie Get Your Gun sung by Annie Oakley and her friendly compet.i.tor Frank Butler called ”Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.” In the context of business, that song could be ret.i.tled ”Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Too, with Dire Consequences.”
In professional sports, a NOT WELCOME sign still greets women. We're allowed to become fans, we're allowed to become journalists, we're even allowed to own the franchise. But although few sports have rules that specifically prohibit us from playing, we haven't been invited to join the team, yet.
In business, the NOT WELCOME sign came down a few decades ago, but that doesn't mean that women are always well-received once we get in the door. We're not. Just as the first woman major league baseball player will be a.s.sessed differently, and more harshly, than a male, we are being rigorously scrutinized for everything we do that doesn't jibe with what men expect businesspeople to do. We're judged by male standards, not our own, which means men can take certain actions freely that we cannot.
This doesn't mean that we can't cry when we don't get promoted, have an affair with a co-worker, yell at our secretary, and so on. We just can't cry, or have an affair, or yell, and expect the same consequences as a man. We will pay a high price, our place in the game will s.h.i.+ft, people's perception of us will change.
The other day I read an article about a powerful businesswoman who said that, once she'd reached a certain level of power, she told the men around her that she always cried when she became upset or angry and that they were just going to have to get used to it. She didn't care if it made them uncomfortable. She didn't want to stifle her instinct any longer. Let the tears flow.
As you'll read below, crying is one of the many actions that are judged differently in a woman and a man. But if you fully understand the consequences of these kinds of actions, and you feel that you can use them to your advantage, then by all means, go ahead and fidget, cry, yell-to your heart's content.
1
They Can Cry. You Can't.
When former U.S. senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina lost his reelection bid, tears stained his cheeks at his press conference. The media called this a powerful display of emotion. When former congresswoman and then-presidential candidate Pat Schroeder cried on television, men smirked. Just like a woman, they said.