Read “You Are the Message:  Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are” by Roger Ailes.

A friend sent me this card and I just had to share it with you.  It’s by Shannon Martin/Girl Designer.  If you’re not at least a little tired from making waves, it means you’re floating too much (if you catch my drift).  Make a difference – go out and make some waves today.   

TAGS: making a difference, making waves, Shannon Martin Girl Designer

When you feel as if you’re on the defensive, stop what you’re doing (usually explaining) and shift to asking questions.  It will change the dynamic and give you information you need to move forward.

Do something today that would make those who know you say, “That’s so out of character for her!” 

As usual, over the weekend, I had the chance to catch up on some reading - the April 21 issue of New York Magazine was one of the things I read. Amanda Fortini’s article, The Feminist Reawakening, published before the Pennsylvania primary, makes the point that the media treatment of Hillary Clinton not only reminds some women that we still have a long way to come but has had the unintended benefit of making other (younger) women aware of just how thin that pink line really is.

However things turn out for Senator Clinton’s candidacy, this is a good thing. 

TAGS: Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Political skills, Politics, politics at work, power, women leaders, women's equality

Gain comfort with risk taking by doing something different than you usually do it.  For example, drive home a different way, have lunch at a new restaurant, or talk to someone you’ve seen but never interacted with before. 

Yesterday, Thin Pink Line blogger Simone said she struggles with the balance between being a team player and taking on so much extra work that it undermines her.  She also wondered if playing sports should be a prerequisite for women going into business.  I recently read an article that said most girls who start off playing sports at a young age drop out by the time they’re teenagers.  So in some ways we never really get all the lessons we need to learn about playing to win.  Also, just this morning, I read that the female brain is wired to avoid conflict, so when we do play sports and inevitable conflicts arise we’re more likely to drop out than boys/men.

Here are a few tips for how to be a team player without being a door mat:

1. If you’re going to volunteer to take on extra work to show you’re a team player, make sure you let people KNOW you’re going out of your way.  Don’t make it look seamless. Say something like, “I’m willing to take this on for the sake of the team” or “It’s going to involve more overtime than I want but if it means the team succeeds I’m happy to do it.”

2.  Aim for high profile extra work.  Sure, we all have to do grunt work now and then for which we get no credit, but balance that out by taking on extra assignments that put you in front of executive management or clients.  Extra work of this nature provides you with an important showcase for your talents. 

3.  If you know you’ve been a team player who has taken on extra work and it’s now someone else’s turn, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Given that I’ve worked the past few nights on the XYZ project, I believe it’s someone else’s turn to show their team commitment.  I’m happy to take my turn again when it comes around to me once more.” 

TAGS: Being a team player, high profile assignments, women in sports, women volunteering

Answer questions simply, directly, and without preambles or explanations.  Aim to keep your response about as long as the question itself. 

When Senator George McGovern decided to cease supporting Hillary Clinton yesterday, that must have hurt her. Of course, she’s a street fighter, and no doubt she has gotten past it as she has other defections from her side. That is one of the impressive things about her. You can see the pain on her face sometimes, but she gets through it and a day or so later she is looking relaxed and rising to the challenge again. Few things bother an opponent more than that skill.

How does she do it? Where does such strength come from?

I’ve been reading a book, The Female Brain, in which Dr. Louann Brizendine, neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, explains that women have superior brain wiring for communication and emotional tones — even as infants. We see more relational subtlety. She argues, as do other researchers, that women and men have different brain sensitivities to stress and conflict. We could argue this for a lifetime, but there is a general perception that women have greater difficulty rebounding from disappointments in close relationships at work.

InThe Secret Handshake and It’s All Politics, though, I’ve written about women becoming “street fighters” and how important that capacity is to moving upward at work. So how do we go from being ultra-sensitive to being able to take a slam at work and get up again tomorrow ready to move on?

It takes a lot of learning the hard way, but here are a few important components: learning from watching others, including men, experience deep disappointment yet successfully move on, thinking about how someone you admire would handle it, getting some mentoring from street fighters, learning some defensive and offensive techniques, and learning how to read between the lines so you can anticipate such negative events before they even happen.

This is a tall order. If handling disappointment at work is one of the more difficult challenges you face, you could consider asking people about their worst disappointment, how they initially thought about it, who they went to for guidance, what they ultimately did and why it worked or didn’t.

Then you have to begin getting past small disappointments (that may seem large at first) so you can prepare yourself for bigger ones. No one escapes pain at work, but you can become better at putting it into perspective. As one T.V. commentator said of politics recently, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s impossible to make friends at work, it’s wise to know that work usually isn’t the place to look for your best ones.

TAGS: handling disappointment, Hillary Clinton, politics at work, street fighters

Paraphrase what others have said before giving your own opinion.  It’s impossible to do if you haven’t been listening.