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I confess: Three stereotypes about women at work which I've proven true
A friend of mine recently got a pathetically low raise at work after having a spectacular year there. Sure, the economy is in bad shape, but her company did great and she contributed to the performance. She’s been there a few years and she knows for a fact that two of her colleagues — both men — received higher raises for similar performance. When she told me, I immediately said that she has to talk to her boss and negotiate for a better package. “Be confident in your work and your abilities, and go in there knowing that what you’re asking for is right,” I said, in my most convincing voice.
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I stand behind my advice, but I’d be lying if I pretended that I’ve always followed it in my career. In truth, when I read articles about things women do at work that make it more difficult for them to earn more money or attain leadership roles, I nod not only because I’ve seen this type of behavior but also because I’ve been guilty of it. And I thought this would be as good a time as any to come clean about (at least) three stereotypes about women at work that I helped prove right:
Women don’t negotiate as well or often as men.
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My 30-second plan for a better work week
Every Sunday night I sit down with a notebook (still very much into writing things down, sorry all of you techies) and write down my to-do list. I get work stuff done first, then write down family/personal to-dos. While I aim to just make it a one-day list for Monday, it never works — it ends up being more of a week to-do list. I like this process because it helps me get an idea of what I need to accomplish and what I need to remember.
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But the list is usually really long. So once I’ve got it down, I go through it again — I put a star next to some items which are important, I circle others, which I know I just can’t forget. It ends up being more messy than I’d like.
After I finished my list tonight I looked at it and then opened a new, fresh page and wrote down the following:
- 1 thing I MUST do this week at work:
- 1 thing I MUST do this week at home:
- 1 thing I will do for me this week:
- 1 thing I will do daily this week:
- 1 thing I will let go this week:
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Is there a right and a wrong way to quit your job?
My answer is yes and I've done some of both.
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What made me think to write this post was a call I got from someone I’d worked with in my prior life. This guy is a VP at a software company where I used to be on the board and he was calling to get my advice on the best way to leave his job. He got offered an amazing opportunity at another company and has decided to move on, but wanted to make sure he was going about it the right way. The team is small and a lot depends on him, the CEO has a lot of trust in him, and he has visibility to board level.
My few points of advice were:
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Do you buy too much stuff?
My answer to this question would have been ‘probably yes’ before we took on our BIG life change and traded in an overpaid job for a new career as an entrepreneur.
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I’ve always been pretty frugal. I grew up without money, I lived on welfare when my family immigrated to the US, and those experiences influenced me to always try to spend less, not buy things we don’t need, and to generally be conservative about money. But even with that foundation once my husband and I had a solid income we bought things we didn’t need. Nothing big or fancy, but a cute T-shirt here, a fun DVD there, an awesome new toy for our daughter — all of these add up to a bunch of stuff we don’t really need.
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If money didn't matter, what would be your career?
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I know this is a completely theoretical question for 99.9% of us, but I like to think about it anyway.I spent the last 10 years of my career, before launching Work It, Mom!, doing work that was interesting, stimulating, often exciting, but work that I was not passionate about. Due to a lot of factors, not the least of which is being an immigrant to this country, I’ve always known that I needed to support myself and in addition, be able to help my parents (and my grandparents), if possible. This meant that I chose my career path with money very much in mind.
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Are we to blame for not making as much money as men?
Studies have shown over and over that women don’t ask for raises nearly as often or as forcefully as men do. There are many books on the subject of why don’t women negotiate for raises and many career coaches focus on helping women learn how to negotiate better. But this morning I read a great post by Leslie Morgan Steiner about another reason that women might not be negotiating for raises or promotions: We pay a price for it if we do it. She talks about a recent study that showed in the workplace, men were always less willing to work with women who had attempted to negotiate vs. those who didn’t. And they didn’t care if they worked with men who negotiated.
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This really resonated with me. The idea that women don’t negotiate because we’re not confident enough in our abilities has always struck me as incomplete. Read More »
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Are confident women perceived as being bitchy at work?
I spoke to a reporter recently who is doing an article about women entrepreneurs. (Luckily she is not doing an article about mompreneurs because, well, you know how I feel about that.) One of the issues we touched on was how women are perceived in the business world. I told her my stories -- which you can read here and here. But then I said to this very nice woman that during my 10-year career in the business world I've developed some strong opinions about this topic:
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- Women who are strong and confident are often perceived as aggressive and bitchy.
- Women who are nice and collaborative are often perceived as weak.
- Once we have kids, many assume that our mom identity IS the entirety of who we are.
- Women are too often each other's worst enemies (we don't network as well, we don't help each other well, we are often catty).
This is all true, in my experience and according to some experts. But second to waving a magic wand and changing these ingrained perceptions and biases in the workplace, the only solution I can come up with is to try to not care and push ahead.
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Your work is likely suffering if you work for a rude boss
At one of my past jobs I worked for someone I consider a truly toxic person. He would go out of his way to make people feel bad, embarrassed, insecure, and he would often talk about doing this intentionally. “I like to put people off-balance and see how they react,” he would say.
Once I’d made a mistake in a document we had to send out. I’d emailed him the document to review and instead of emailing me back to let me know about the mistake, he forwarded the document to our client, with the mistake in it, saying that I’d authored it and if they had any comments, to get back to us. When the client responded, they pointed out the mistake and my boss came into my office to tell me that he knew it was in there, but he didn’t correct it because he wanted to me to learn from the embarrassment of my mistake. (I don’t cry at the office, as a rule, but I came close that day.)
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What to do when you're totally unmotivated at work
First, a confession: I am really unmotivated to work today.
This is rare. Correction, this has been rare since I changed careers and started doing something I actually enjoy. But I’m human, it happens, and the fact that I’ve been sick for days and have just returned from a business-trip-turned-weekend-away-with-my-husband to face a pile of to-dos definitely has something to do with it. Oh, and the fact that just as I was trying to get energized to start working this morning the Internet died didn’t help much.
So here I am, unmotivated to work but needing desperately to start plowing through the to-do list. This isn’t a time when I can throw caution to the wind, call it a bad day, and just chill out watching stupid TV (but how I wish!). This is a time when I have to get creative about finding my motivation. And so I figured there’s no better way to do it than to post about it here, so you can check on me later — and hopefully share your own tips for how to get motivated at work.
Here are my ideas and tips for getting motivated to do work when you’re not feeling motivated:
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Becoming an entrepreneur: My interview with Sam Reich-Dagnen
One of my favorite things about running Work It, Mom! is the chance to meet some absolutely incredible women and be inspired by them. Sam is one of those women and I wanted to share my interview with her. She is the co-founder, with her husband, of Braincandy, a company that produces digital products, including DVDs, to help kids learn, play and explore the world around them. She lives in Seattle, Washington and is a mom of six year-old twins: Blaise and Logan.
Sam gave up an impressive (and lucrative) career with Microsoft to start Braincandy with her husband and shares some great perspectives about starting a company and live as an entrepreneur.
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