Katherine Crowley - Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal

Copyright 2013 by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To Carol Crowley,
with love

CHAPTER 1
The Different Faces of Mean

CHAPTER 2
Meanest of the Mean

CHAPTER 3
Very Mean

CHAPTER 4
Passively Mean

CHAPTER 5
Doesnt Mean to Be Mean

CHAPTER 6
Doesnt Know Shes Mean

CHAPTER 7
She Brings Out Your Mean

CHAPTER 8
Group Mean

Conclusion:
Mean Girl Cheat Sheet and Parting Words

There are so many people who have supported us along the way, but a few special people stand out. Wed like to acknowledge them here.

First, we are extremely grateful to all of the women whom we interviewed (anonymously). Thank you for giving us your time and for sharing your honest stories. Without your true experiences, Mean Girls at Work would not be possible.

Thank you to our company team for assisting us with this project: Denyse Thompson, Christine Medina, Christine Zarett, and Deborah Brozina.

Sincere thanks to the people who pointed us in the right direction for this book: Lea Brunson, Mark Chimsky, Niki Papadopoulos, Elaine Markson, and Gary Johnson.

Without the extra support that our families provided throughout the process of writing Mean Girls at Work, we could not have stayed sane. Thank you to David Winkler for always reading whatever we wrote. Thank you Nicole Winkler, for your true belief in us. Thank you Clif Eddens, for hot meals and constant encouragement.

Finally, wed like to express special thanks to the McGraw-Hill team. We appreciate your excitement and your belief in our work: Stephanie Frerich, Pamela Peterson, and Sara Hendricksen.

WOMAN-TO-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS ARE NATURALLY INTENSE. When theyre good, theyre very good; when theyre bad, they can be horrible. The purpose of this book is to give women the knowledge and skills that they need in order to stay professional no matter how other women behave at work.

Our mission is to empower women to support one another in the workplace. Our hope is that anyone who reads this book will gain a greater understanding of how to transform any difficult woman-to-woman relationship into an association that benefits and supports both parties.

Why is it important for women to work well together now? With unprecedented access to education, training, professional opportunities, and buying power, women are positioned to dissolve and move beyond any barriers that previously thwarted their advancement.

The problem is that few women can move up the ranks of their professions if their female colleagues covertly (or overtly) hold them back. While its natural to assume that most women support other women and want them to succeed, thats not always the case. In fact, studies show that many women believe it is their female associates who are most threatened by the prospect of a woman in power.

By writing Mean Girls at Work, were starting the conversation that many women are reluctant to have. Until recently, most discussions about mean girls in the workplace have taken place behind closed doors or in the company ladies room. Why? We think its because, having struggled and fought to gain ground as participants and earners equal to men, women are hesitant to talk about the dark side of woman-to-woman relationships. It feels like a betrayal of the sisterhood. And in fact, women did have to bond together to voice their concerns and establish their legal, political, and economic rights.

This is the next level of feminism. Its time to take an honest look at how we treat one another in the workplace and strive for greater professionalism and support for one another.

After the national and international success of our two books, Working with You Is Killing Me and Working for You Isnt Working for Me, we became known as workplace relationship experts. One day, the training director of a major corporation asked us to give a lecture on women haters. At the time, we didnt know what a women hater was. The training director explained that women haters were the women at work who were mean to other women.