competition

Next Steps to Fight Career Aggression

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  • Practice feedback skills as much as you can. As with any skills, they get easier with practice. You can practice giving positive feedback to family members, friends, or coworkers so that you are ready to give negative feedback when the need arises. Be sure to include all the important elements of effective feedback: specific behavior, reaction (thoughts), and feelings. Each component gives a different type of information about the impact of a person’s behavior, and they are all important.
  • Practice using the mother-sister-daughter triangle. Notice when you have strong reactions to another woman, either positive or negative, and ask yourself where you have placed her in the triangle. Whom does she remind you of?
  • Investigate the current support structures in your organization for strengthening a women’s community, for learning and creating a shared vision and code of conduct, and for assessing the company’s policies and procedures. Is there a diversity effort? An existing women’s forum? If yes, get involved in the program committee. If not, get a group of women together, including women bosses, for a monthly lunch or dinner and talk about how to shift the patterns to support each other more. Discuss the company policies and practices, and consider how you might develop a business case to present to the leaders about changes that are needed.
  • Research the EEO and harassment policies in your organization. Every organization has them. Be aware of what they say and know your rights.
    •   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Career Aggression: What You Can Do to Stop It

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  • Whom you talked to
  • What you noticed or heard
  • When you had each observation or conversation or learned a piece of information
    • The rule of thumb is to create a detailed record of who, what, and when as soon as you begin to feel that something might be going on that is directed at damaging you. Keep these notes with you and do not leave them lying on your desk or easily accessible in your desk because someone who might spread the information around or who might personally be involved in trying to damage you could see them. You will eventually bring this record with you to HR to provide facts for your case. Step 2: Do your homework. Research your organization’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statement, employee code of conduct, and harassment policy to understand your rights. Download them from the organization’s website, or obtain them from the Human Resources Department. Underline the sections that seem to cover your situation and add them to the folder of materials that you are keeping with you. Every organization has policies and statements that reflect its legal obligation to provide a work environment for all employees that is free from harassment and protects employees from working in a hostile work environment. If someone is trying to damage your career, that person is creating a hostile work environment for you. Your request for help to stop the unwelcome behavior directed at damaging your reputation and career will be taken more seriously when you can show you have done your homework and understand your rights as an employee. Step 3: Seek out a trusted advisor. It is important that you talk with someone whom you trust to have an unbiased view. This person can help you think through how you will proceed and help you put together your talking points if you are going to confront the aggressor or file an official complaint. You may know a person in HR whom you feel can be your trusted advisor and keep your conversations confidential until you decide what action you are going to take. If not, a trusted advisor can also be any of the following: (1) someone at work who can advise you (2) a family member who is not biased or emotionally involved, or (3) a professional, such as a clergy member or a therapist with whomyou have a good relationship. Step 4: Confront the career aggressor. If at all possible, confront your aggressor in front of a witness before you officially file a complaint. Plan your talking points with your trusted advisor, and confront your aggressor in a private setting with a witness at your side. The aggressor may admit that she has been acting to damage you, or she may not. In either case, record what happens in the conversation in your detailed notes, as well as any subsequent actions the person might take to try to threaten you to keep you from filing a complaint. Step 5: Have a confidential conversation with a management- or director-level HR person. Discuss filing a complaint and show the person your detailed record. Discuss steps to escalate your complaint to the next level and ask for her or his advice. It is your decision whether or not to take the next steps. If you decide to go forward with filing a formal complaint, the organization must conduct an investigation. Whether or not the organization is able to prove that the accused person did try to damage your career, this fluid process is very likely to stop the career aggression and restore your reputation. This process is summarized in table 9.
      Table 9. How to stop career aggression
    Step 1: Create a detailed record: who, what, and when. Step 2: Research the organization’s EEO statement, employee code of conduct, and harassment policy. Step 3: Seek out a trusted advisor. Step 4: Confront the career aggressor. Step 5: Speak with a director-level HR professional about filing a complaint.
        An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    The Mother-Sister-Daughter Triangle: A Tool for Identifying Projections between Women

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    The core roles of mother, sister, and daughter are universal influences in our development as women, and the triangle is an archetypal structure reflecting the interdependent aspects of these influences (see figure 1). It seems likely that this collective experience of women in one or more of these roles informs many of our relationships with other women. Every woman knows the experience of being a daughter. Although not all women have the experience of being a mother or a sister, most women hold some idealized image of mother and sister in their psyche. These experiences or idealizations are often so potent that we project them onto others. They can influence everyday behavior in individual women. The phenomenon of the mother-sister-daughter triangle becomes a lens through which our relationships with other women can be viewed, especially when we are trying to make sense of extreme reactions to another woman—positive or negative, adoration or detestation. To use the mother-sister-daughter lens effectively, you must have some understanding of where you might be caught in the triangle with the other woman to whom you are having a strong reaction. Does she remind you of your mother or sister or daughter? If you can see a connection between how this woman has behaved toward you and an early experience you had, you might come to feel less offended by her. As an example, I felt that a woman I had known professionally, Cheryl, had treated me unfairly, and she had not responded to my requests to discuss the offending incident at the time. Several years went by, and I was not happy to walk into a new organization and see her working there. I felt that I could not trust her because of what happened in the past, and I told other people not to trust her either. I kept my distance from her. I could not see that I was also behaving in an untrustworthy manner by making demeaning comments about her to others. I could only see that she was someone who had done me wrong. After some time in the same organization (and avoiding her), I learned about the mother-sister-daughter triangle in a women’s leadership training course, and I applied it to my relationship with Cheryl. I asked myself whom Cheryl reminded me of in my family. It took some time for me to realize that she reminded me of one of my sisters, who had tried to physically harm me when we were young. I had put Cheryl in the dangerous sister part of the triangle. As soon as I realized I had done that, an amazing thing happened. It was like a curtain lifted and I could see Cheryl for who she really was. I stopped feeling negative about her. We were never able to reconstruct exactly what had happened all those years ago, but she no longer felt untrustworthy to me. She turned out to be a very nice woman who was not my dangerous sister. This was a projection that I had put on her that was not actually about her at all.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Vision Statements and Codes of Conduct

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    Sample vision statement and code of conduct

    Vision statement The women of [this organization] are a community of high-performing women who support each other to realize our own potential and the potential of our teams and to provide exceptional service to our clients. Code of conduct To realize our vision, we

    • Surface our friendship rules—we talk about our expectations • Stay present and engaged with each other, even in the face of disappointment • Give each other feedback about the impact of our behaviors • Are trustworthy—we transknit, but we do not gossip • Maintain confidences when asked to do so or else say we cannot • Celebrate and acknowledge each other’s achievements • Compete for rewards and resources while affirming our relationships • Engage in meaningful disagreement and listen to each other • Challenge ideas, not people • Help each other feel heard in meetings • Self-disclose to the degree we are each comfortable • Are authentic—we share where we are directly to each other • Ask ourselves, “What else could be true?” when we feel judgmental of another woman

      An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Next Steps for Dealing with Negative Stereotypes

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  • Discounted or doubted yourself?
  • Apologized before presenting your ideas in a group or meeting, such as saying, “I may be wrong” or “This is probably a stupid question”?
  • Felt like an imposter or fraud when you got a promotion or opportunity?
  • Looked in the mirror and really disliked what you saw?
  • Tied your self-image to your appearance or clothes?
    • Level II—Have you ever
    • Said something negative about another woman and denied it when she asked?
    • Talked negatively about a woman behind her back and smiled to her face?
    • Made a commitment to support another woman and didn’t do it when the time came?
    • Said to someone, “She’s such a bitch”?
    • Made fun of another woman’s appearance behind her back?
    • Said or thought, “You can’t trust women”?
    • Spread a rumor that you had heard that cast doubt on another woman’s competence?
    • Seen another woman’s ideas attacked or ignored in a meeting, whether you agreed with them or not, while you sat back and watched in silence?
    Use the following scoring guide to reflect upon your answers:

    1–3 checks = You exhibit low internalization of negative stereotypes about women.

    4–6 checks = You exhibit moderate internalization of negative stereotypes about women.

    7+ checks = You exhibit strong internalization of negative stereotypes about women.

    2. Think about your vision for how you would like women to behave toward each other at work. Create a personal code of conduct for how you want to behave. Post it and look at it daily to remind yourself of how you want to be.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Career Sabotage – Part 3

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    When I worked in the emergency department, I was in charge every night—and the people who worked with me enjoyed me being in charge, or at least that was what was said to me. I had beautiful reviews and had some great pals, many of whom were at my wedding. Fast-forward about five years, and I have now decided to leave my management position to go back to the emergency department. So I talked to the emergency department manager, who has been a friend of mine for twenty-five years. About three weeks into the process, when I hadn’t heard anything, I went back to my friend who was the manager of the emergency department and said, “So what’s going on?” She got this really awful look on her face and she twitched—and she was tripping all over herself and said, “You’d better talk to your boss.” So I sit down with my boss, who says to me, “There is a problem. They don’t want you there.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. She went on to say this one, this one, and this one—my friends, people who had been at my wedding—had gone to their bosses and said, “We don’t want her.” I was shocked. We would go out after work together; we would talk to each other on days off. Sometimes I would help them out with babysitting or they would help me. If I had any kind of a party or get-together, they were first on my list to invite. They were the people I laughed with at work; they were the people I cried with at work. They were there through my divorce, through a terribly tough time in my life. Why would my friends turn on me like that? That they would stab a friend in the back for no apparent reason for their own selfish gain? Well the bottom line was, they were afraid that I was going to usurp their perceived position. Keri’s story is an example of the impact of mixing friendship expectations with the hierarchical norms of masculine work environments, which can trigger horizontal violence. In such cases, acts of covert career aggression can leave the recipient feeling not only bewildered but shocked when it happens. Career aggression can also damage a woman’s self-confidence. Angella, a diplomatic services manager in Mexico, explained that “When someone is saying bad things about you, after a while you start to feel that maybe the bad things are true.”   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Career Sabotage – Part 2

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    This group of three women who had been there a long time, who were all friends, began to really try to sabotage me. They’d give me hate mail in my in-box. This was before e-mail. They would steal my mail and throw it away. They would put a key to the side of my car on both sides. They would talk about me incessantly to other people and say I wasn’t really very good. They would gossip about me to anybody and they’d tell stories about me, like I was sleeping with the boss, which wasn’t true, and they would just try to sabotage me. Kendra reported that she did not even know who was doing these things to her until considerable time had elapsed. The hate mail and property damage were upsetting, but stealing and destroying her mail had a negative impact on her ability to perform her job when she did not receive information or documents that others thought she had. Her reputation and credibility were also impugned. Once again, Kendra did not know these women. The key to this dynamic is in Kendra’s statement that the women “had been there a long time.” She went on to explain that she eventually learned that they did not feel valued and had not been promoted and that she had been hired in above them, even though they were more experienced and had equivalent levels of education—another setup for horizontal violence to be triggered.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>