Lois P. Frankel - See Jane Lead: 99 Ways for Women to Take Charge at Work

Copyright 2007 by Lois P. Frankel, PhD

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Warner Business Books

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

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First eBook Edition: April 2007

ISBN: 978-0-446-19485-3

Also by Lois P. Frankel, PhD

STOP SABOTAGING YOUR CAREER

8 Proven Strategies to SucceedIn Spite of Yourself

NICE GIRLS DONT GET RICH

75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money

NICE GIRLS DONT GET THE CORNER OFFICE

101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers

KINDLING THE SPIRIT

Acts of Kindness and Words of Courage for Women

WOMEN, ANGER AND DEPRESSION

Strategies for Self-Empowerment

This book is dedicated to the women of MOSTE: Motivating Our Students Through Experience.

For twenty years youve donated your time, wisdom, and hearts to at-risk girls by encouraging them to stay in school, graduate, and go on to college.

Your commitment ensures we will have a next generation of diverse women leaders. I honor your leadership by donating a portion of the proceeds from this book to MOSTEs Bernadine Robinson and Jacqueline Miller Scholarship Funds.

T he help, support, and guidance of many people went into writing this book. Thanking each of you seems hardly sufficient to express the depth of my gratitude, so I hope you know just how truly grateful I am for the gifts you have brought to me and, in turn, to the reader.

Diana Baroni, vice president and executive director at Warner Booksyour confidence allows me to write in my own voice about the things that are so important to me, yet you challenge me to be better each time.

Chris Dao, former assistant director of publicity at Warner Booksyour expertise helped me to go places I had only dreamed about before.

The entire team at Warner Booksthere are far too many of you to mention without risking leaving someone out, but each of you is clearly superb at what you do, and the results prove it.

Bob Silversteinwhat can I say? As a literary agent youre peerless, as a friend youre divine.

The women who took time from their busy lives as leaders to speak with meplease know that your insights, eloquence, and courage are what give this book heart.

Dr. Pam Erhardt, Dr. Kim Finger, Jessica Vaughn, and the team at Corporate Coaching International and Drloisfrankel.comthe way you intuitively alternate between leadership and followership, especially during some very rough days, is a gift I could not live without.

Kathleen Booth, director of organizational effectiveness at Warner Bros.your generosity of spirit and time are given with such grace and are gratefully received.

My literary colleagues who took the time to speak with me and gave me permission to quote or reprint your workI hope one day to be able to repay your kindness.

M y last two books focused on the myriad mistakes women make because they suffer from nice girl syndrome. How I wish I was paid one dollar for each time an interviewer asked me, Are you saying you have to be mean and nasty to achieve your goals? One more timeand unequivocallyI say No! Nice girls are those who, in adulthood, continue to exhibit the behaviors they were taught in childhood that were appropriate for little girls. You know you have the syndrome when you take better care of everyone else than you do yourself, when youre afraid to take action for fear of disappointing or displeasing others, and when, despite the fact that youre a grown woman, you continue to act in accordance with the rules you were taught in childhood for how little girls were supposed to behave. In short, nice girls often suffer from the disease to please.

Between Nice Girls Dont Get the Corner Office and Nice Girls Dont Get Rich, Ive suggested 176 mistakes women make when pursuing their professional and financial goals. By now weve focused enough on errors, so this book doesnt focus on mistakesonly on strategies for unleashing your leadership capabilities in a variety of situations. Its not that we dont make mistakes related to leadership, because we do. Put a nice girl in a group of men and women, and shell wait for a manor a more powerful womanto take the lead every time. Ask a nice girl to make a decision for the group and shell take a poll before taking action. Give a nice girl a group of people to lead and shell treat them like a family rather than a team looking to her for decisive, but humane, leadership. And in so doing she denies the talents she possesses that could serve to make her an exemplary leader. Women lead all the timethey just dont call it leadership.

Work and life experiences have enabled us to develop outstanding skills in balancing vision with strategy, taking risks, influencing others, motivating people to achieve their best, building teams of high performers, and capitalizing on our emotional intelligenceall essential ingredients for leading todays workers. In nontheoretical terms and using examples you can relate to, this book shows you the many ways in which you have already exhibited these and other leadership qualities. I wrote this book because I want you to see that you are a leader and you do have what it takes to lead a family, a project, a team, a department, a company, or a country. Who you choose to lead is up to you. This book provides you with the models to do it more confidently.

I often do an exercise in leadership classes and keynote addresses in which I ask the group to name the leaders they most admire. As you might imagine, they come up with a long list of men and a shorter list of women. On every list, though, Mother Teresa appears. Of course. She represents the stereotype of a female leaderpassionate, compassionate, self-sacrificing, and service-oriented. There is no female equivalent of John F. Kennedy, Colin Powell, Jack Welchor, thank goodness, Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones, or others of their ilk. What these men have in common is the ability to lead others toward predetermined goalseven goals that are, at times, not in the best interests of others. When someone, usually a woman, dares to mention Hillary Rodham Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, or Carly Fiorina, it sparks debate. Despite the fact that all of these women possess exemplary leadership capabilities, they arent generally acknowledged and accepted as leaders. Why? In part because a womans credibility doesnt follow her from successful achievement to successful achievement. She must prove herself with every challenge. As author Margaret Atwood said, We still think of a powerful man as a leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Too many women, perhaps you included, hesitate to step into the role of leadership for fear of being called too bossy, aggressive, egotisticalor worse yet, the dreaded B-word: bitch. For the same reasons we dont get the corner offices or riches we deserve, we dont lead in ways that will bring us to a new level of career or personal fulfillment through leadership. As a high school junior, I ran for class president against the young man I was dating at the time. When I won, the achievement had sufficiently damaged his ego to end to our relationship. When I ran against him again for senior-class president and won, it was as if I had personally assaulted his masculinity. Had the tables been turned, had he won one or both of those elections, I cant imagine it damaging the relationship to the same degree. It would have been socially acceptable.