Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman Part 6

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 shift 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 friendship.

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 Washington 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 shift, 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.

Men can get away with tears because it's unexpected. Men believe powerful people don't cry. If they do, they must have an excellent reason.

Women are expected to cry. And when we do, men think it's because we're giving in to a natural instinct or worse, they think we're using tears as a game prop, a tool to manipulate them into feeling guilt.

Many years ago I knew a man who was fired from a rival media company. He marched into his boss's office and burst into tears, telling the boss that he could never disclose to his wife what had happened because she looked up to him, that he could no longer afford to keep his kids in private school, that he'd have to drop out of his private club.

The boss's reaction? He felt terrible-not because the guy didn't need to be fired (the move was long overdue), but because the boss could see himself in the same situation. "Here's a breadwinner just like me," he thought. "What would happen if I were in his shoes? Would I fall apart like this?"

The boss called Human Resources and gave the man six additional months of severance.

A month later, that same boss fired a woman. When she cried in the office, he was so uncomfortable that the moment she left, he walked out and told a colleague, "We were right to let her go. Can you believe she broke down right in my office? I don't want people working for us who can't control their emotions."

2 They Can Have s.e.x. You Can't.

A woman at a major accounting firm once confided in me, "One of the major reasons I've succeeded is that there are so few s.e.xy men here. I was never tempted."

Not a small point. I always recommend that unless they're outright husband hunting, job seekers look for positions in places where they find the men generally unattractive.

Some companies are fraught with s.e.xual tension, whether the employees are attractive or not. You feel it from the moment you walk in the door for your first interview. You see it in the way people look at each other. You hear it in the suggestive comments.

Avoid these places. They're the ones where you're likely to get caught up in a s.e.xual liaison. And when you do, you lose.

Men are more likely to get away with s.e.x in the office. The reason? After the romance is gone and the fighting starts, the more powerful person plots to oust the subordinate from the picture. Since a man is generally the one with the clout, the woman usually ends up getting fired, transferred, or pushed aside. Little if anything happens to him.

Even if a woman ends her affair without a demotion, she's still tarred. People will always see her differently; they'll say her success is due to her s.e.xual skills. And without her team's respect, she's not a desirable player.

For a man, the worst-case scenario (apart from dismissal) is a s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit. But to win her case a woman has to prove that s.e.x wasn't consensual, and that might be hard to do after a two-year fling.

GAME STUDY: Not long ago one of the top-ranking women at a large manufacturing conglomerate left her job for a smaller company on the opposite coast. The official reason: She had the long-term potential of making serious money. The real reason: She had been having an affair with a married vice president and got caught. The two had been equals within the hierarchy, which is one reason the woman felt she was safe when the romance started. She knew it wouldn't last forever, and when it ended, she figured they would both return to the life they knew before.

What she hadn't counted on was office gossip. At her level, there were three other women and 25 men. She had told only one of the women, but somehow all the men seemed to know. Her former lover denied he'd told a soul, and it didn't really matter whether he was telling the truth or not. The damage was done. If the subject of extramarital s.e.x arose, every man in the room would look directly at her. Any time anyone made a s.e.xual joke, any time s.e.xual innuendo pervaded the air, she always felt it referred to her. At company social events many of the men began to come on to her as if she were s.e.xually available.

Perhaps she was oversensitive, or perhaps the men really were making her life miserable. Regardless, she knew she felt too uncomfortable to achieve the results she wanted, so she left.

3 They Can Fidget. You Can't.

A close friend who works at a huge software concern told me this story: While he was sitting in a meeting with one woman and seven other men, the woman, a rising star, occasionally tapped her fingernails on her watch, making a sharp clicking sound. Every time she did this, at least one man shot her a look. These looks weren't kind. And they meant that for that one moment he wasn't paying attention to the meeting, but to her.

About an hour into the meeting one of the men, another star, began drumming his fingers on the table. Since everyone in the room had seen this behavior before, they knew what it meant: The man was becoming bored. Because he was well regarded, his impatience infected the rest of the room, and the meeting quickly broke up.

Women fidget. Tapping our fingers, twirling our hair, smoothing our dress usually represents an old habit from childhood, and usually indicates insecurity.

Personally, I had a habit of pushing my cuticles back with my fingers. I kept my hands in my lap as I did it, so I figured no one could see me. But years ago a male executive asked me brusquely why an executive would do something so silly. I immediately stopped. I was startled that anyone had ever seen me do it.

Guys consider a woman's annoying little habits exactly that-annoying little habits. To them, she's broadcasting to the world that she is uncomfortable, insecure, fl.u.s.tered.

When a man is tapping, however, it usually means he's impatient. Thus it tends to be a power play, a nonverbal cue that says, "I'm bored, I've heard enough of this, let's get it over with."

If you want to play the game the way men play, don't do anything that makes them think less of you. If you do, you are letting your power erode.

GAME HINT: As you go up the corporate ladder, you'll have more of an opportunity to sit in those huge, overstuffed chairs in presidents' offices and boardrooms. They're so large they'll make you feel like a kid again. I've seen important women sit in one of those chairs and suddenly start fidgeting like a twelve-year-old.

Sadly, office furniture is built for men. The manufacturers have no choice but to make those chairs male-sized, which means they are usually uncomfortable for us. Instead of being fully present, with our hands in front of us and our back erect, the chair seems too low, the table too high; when you try to fidget your way to comfort, the table seems too low, the chair too high. It's hard to feel powerful when your feet barely touch the ground.

Learn how to sit in a man's world. It's his equipment, his furniture. To look as though you're in command of the s.p.a.ce you inhabit, try some simple tricks. Don't let the s.p.a.ce command you. Lean forward, sit on the edge of the chair, be present. When you find a place of comfort, stay there. I have to admit it took me years to figure out how to inhabit my executive desk chair.

Someday we may have the power to design our own furniture. It's hard to imagine, but try to picture the moment when office furniture is tailored for women's bodies, and it's the men who are fidgeting to find comfort.

4 They Can Yell. You Can't.

Recently two executives, a man and a woman, engaged in a public fight in the corridors of CNN. Within the s.p.a.ce of ten minutes, the story came back to me through several different people, which meant it was moving rapidly around the building. I know that the woman became very angry and finally called the man a p.r.i.c.k. I know that he called her something equally bad.

I don't know exactly what else he said, or he did, because all the reports of the story concerned her. This woman had yelled just as loudly and as furiously as the man. People were astounded.

No one is surprised to hear a man raise his voice, see him show his anger publicly, watch him turn red and fume. Men are expected to shout. They spend their lives roaring at each other. When they play games, they yell at their opponents, they yell at their teammates, they yell at the spectators. They yell at themselves, too.

Women, however, are taught to control our anger. When we feel upset, wronged, hurt, we learn to internalize it. Guys turn it outward; they blame whatever it was that made them angry, not themselves. Current statistics show that self-mutilation among American women is on the rise, and if you combine that with the figures on anorexia and bulimia, you see how much we direct our anger inwards.

When a woman does display anger, people are often uneasy, frightened; they perceive her as difficult, unladylike. They act as though she has no right to yell. After all, the woman's role is to work out issues in relationships, to mediate, to compromise.

Because men perceive a show of anger as something out of character for a woman, they judge it as a loss of control. It's almost always perceived negatively.

However, as I've acc.u.mulated more power, I've realized that there are times when a careful dose of yelling is appropriate. You can't keep inspiring people when they make mistakes or when they don't reach their goals if you don't occasionally vent your disappointment loudly and clearly. There's a point where people actually expect to be chastised, and a point where they'll stop trying hard unless external force is applied. That force is often a boss's wrath.

But I'm very cautious when I engage my anger. If a woman becomes angry too often, she will be seen as (what other word is there?) a b.i.t.c.h. For us, anger is at best used as a secret weapon, one that should be used sparingly and strategically.

You have a perfect right to get mad at someone. But when you do, take a deep breath, consider what you want to say, and say it in a controlled manner. This way you will display your self-possessed power rather than your lack of control.

GAME HINT: If you show some well-thought-out, justified anger, don't let your natural instinct for peace drive you to apologize later. When we get angry and punish our children, we rarely apologize if we felt we were right. The same goes for work. If the anger is genuine, express it, get over it quickly, and move on. Don't place yourself in a one-down position by expressing regrets.