I just wrote a comment (below) in response to Carol’s important post.  Salary inequity is a problem that can haunt you your entire career — especially if you believe others will consider you a “loose canon” if you try to rectify it.  There are few things that can’t be explored and even challenged at work if you do so in politically astute ways.  I wrote The Secret Handshake and It’s All Politics to help people with that part.  If you’re petulant or constantly perturbed instead of observant and astute, it’s difficult to change anything.  Carol is absolutely right about finding ways to learn where your salary stands and raises too.  You have to know your worth and assert it.  Otherwise other people take advantage — one of those human nature things!

TAGS: Communication Skills, Pay Disparity, Political skills, salary

I just finished (hopefully) four days of my fifteen-year-old daughter battling a nasty stomach virus. She’s looking much better today. But it was stressful and little sleep was had.

It reminded me of the many years when she and her brothers were ill and my mother was in and out of emergency rooms while I was trying to do a great job at work and later be promoted to levels women had not reached. Keeping a career going strong under those circumstances is an extraordinary challenge. Even with a husband like mine who has been very involved when the children have been ill and there for me and I for him when things have gotten difficult, meeting family and work demands remains a major challenge for most women.

If you’ve been listening to Senator Obama talk about women’s pay being significantly lower than that of men and his references to Michelle Obama carrying the lion’s share of taking care of their children, you can’t help but wonder why so little has changed since books like The Second Shift were published. Betty Friedan used to tell me that we were in the “second stage”, the title of one of her books, that men were becoming more involved and women were making progress along side of their male counterparts. And certainly to some extent that was and is true.

But I frequently hear from women (young ones too) discovering that they are being paid less than men doing the same jobs. There are those who argue that this is not an issue for government. And I understand that it surely isn’t totally that. Women need to learn to be vigilent about where they stand in terms of salary — before they take a job. And when they haven’t done that, they need to find out where they stand in relation to men doing the same job and find ways within their organization to remedy that inequity. So, in other words, part of the challenge falls to individual women — to all of us. It falls to men to consider such inequity wrong and to do what they can do to alter the situation whether they are managers or colleagues of women underpaid, undervalued or underutilized.

That having been said, it behooves all women to pay attention to what is going on around them. A friend of mine told me last week that her daughter was being offered a consulting job. They didn’t want to pay her what she was worth and the going rate. Her father and mother advised her to walk away. And she did. Too many talented women are talked into less than they deserve. Sometimes that’s required — for a short period of time. When it becomes a habit, women as individuals and as a group lose ground. We inadvertently teach younger women and daughters that it’s fine to accept being undervalued.

We need to keep our eyes wide open, vote for candidates who are serious about improving women’s pay and lessening workplace discrimination. We should expect much from senators and congresspeople in this regard and write to them and/or not vote for them when they fail us. And we should make sure women are not penalized for having children, doing the right thing in terms of being with them when they’re ill, and caring for parents who are ill. We should nudge and even push organizations to be flexible in such times as they are rarely long-term.

In our own relationships, we need to be negotiators of shared responsibility. Individual women should look at their lives, look at the loads they carry, and when they have partners negotiate responsibilities with them. It’s easy to believe that you’re the only one who can feed the baby properly, load the dishwasher the “right way,” soothe an ailing child, work with children on homework, etc. We hurt ourselves this way. And the first step in getting organizations and government to do what is right by women is to do what is right for ourselves. It’s a multi-pronged endeavor.

TAGS: Equal pay, family expectations, family leave, government involvement in pay equity, negotiating pay, overworked

Last week I worked with a client who will be on vacation this week. She’ll be at the beach with her family — and her Blackberry.  We talked a little bit about her plans to manage the amount of work she does while on vacation.  Her habit is to check e-mail once in the morning and then again late afternoon.  She does not take her Blackberry out with her during the day so she is not tempted to check it more often.

What’s your vacation workload management strategy?  I’m of the opinion that there is no right answer, only one that is right for you. Some people have no problem escaping the grip of email - if you are one of them this post is not for you!

Some ideas for those who do struggle: (more…)

TAGS: business communication, Communication Skills, coping skills, simplifying

We at the Thin Pink Line get feedback that readers like the combination of “news you can use” and commentary on current events from women’s perspectives.  You too can get positive feedback about your communications if you follow the same guidelines Carol, Kathleen, Liz, and I use:  balance the big picture and the details.  We know that some people like ideas, concepts and theory while others like practical tools and tips, so we mix it up.  Here are 3 easy tips for how you can do the same for more powerful communications in your work setting:

1.  Prepare for every presentation you make — and remember that every time you open your mouth or prepare a written communique it’s a presentation.  Think about the two or three most important things you want people to take away and keep your message focused on just those.  You’ve heard me say it before: short sounds confident. 

2.  Do your homework.  My 7th grade science teacher, Hans Selye, used to tell us, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”  I never forgot that (and that was quite a while back!).  Regularly reading professional journals, newspapers, and magazines (my favorite is The Week) keeps your mind agile and open to new ideas.  It also helps make for sparkling party conversation.

3.  Brainstorm ideas with people who think differently than you.  If you know you’re an “idea person” who has difficulty communicating the tangible benefits of your ideas, talk to someone who’s good at it and ask for help in synthesizing your concepts for crisp communication.  Conversely, if you tend to get bogged down in the weeds, look to those who are always coming up with new ways of approaching old problems for help in assessing the bigger picture. 

Make yours a great week-end. 

TAGS: business communication, Communication Skills, influence with impact

While Hillary Clinton has received praise from people for her willingness to fight and not give up, it’s hard not to wonder whether people are looking at how acceptable it has become to insult women in the press. Surely there will be spillover to the workplace if people who serve as "senior analysts" for once reputable stations like CNN continue refer to Clinton in vile, derogatory ways. I’m not going to write something long about this. It’s just worth wondering whether women will find themselves dealing with more sexism.  After all, that’s what went on in election process in the mainstream media. If it does increase at work, it will be difficult for women to call upon the efforts of feminists to support them as in many quarters they’ve been dismissed as humming an old tune — not in touch with the times — still holding on to grudges when their issues no longer exist. Will we wake up soon and see that indeed people in our culture have become comfortable with patronizing, dismissing, and insulting women because of their gender? I hope not. But watching what has been going on, it’s hard not to think it could indeed happen — especially if women are not paying sufficient attention because they’d rather think those days are over or if they let insults pass to avoid appearing oversensitive. More productive, as always, is nipping put-downs in the bud with a well-turned phrase such as "Maybe you’d like to rephrase that."

TAGS: Hillary Clinton, media bias, sexism, Women at Work

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

Don’t you just love pesky neighbors?  We’ve got one who wants us to trim our trees because they block the view from her kitchen window while she’s washing dishes.  It’s not like she has a panorama of the city or anything.  It’s just one small window and the trees only bother her when she does the dishes (which can’t be all that often since she lives alone and travels a lot).  We’ve told her several times that we want the fullness of the trees throughout the summer because they shade the house but that when we trim them in the Fall we’ll take her needs into consideration.  In an effort to get us to do what she wants she says things like, “I thought I had nice neighbors” and ”I thought I was buying a home with a view” (right - it’s Pasadena not Malibu).  She even told another neighbor that I was hostile to her.  This is typical passive aggressive behavior.  If you listen to only the words they seem benign, but at the heart of it there’s no interest in the other person’s viewpoint or needs.  So how do you handle a passive aggressive person?  It’s not easy, but here are a few tips:

1. Don’t go for their bait.  They want to engage you in an argument where you wind up as the bad person and they wind up as the victim.  This can’t happen if you don’t respond to nonsensical statements such as, “I thought I had nice neighbors.”
2. Stay neutral by acknowledging without agreeing.  To keep the conversation on an even, objective keel use statements like, “I can understand your concern” or “I understand why it’s important to you.”  This usually soothes the passive aggressive personality. 
3. Be clear about your intentions.   Passive aggressive people often take your words and twist them to suit their needs.  That’s harder to do if you are crystal clear about the actions you intend to take (eg. “My plan is to trim the trees in the Fall…”). 
4. Get/put as much as you can in writing.  When dealing with passive aggressive people at work it helps to get things in writing so that you can refer back to it when they conveniently forget what was agreed to or renege on their commitments. 

TAGS: assertive skills, assertiveness, dealing with passive aggressive people, pesky neighbors

I attended The White House Project EPIC Awards last Thursday held at The American Museum of Natural History in New York. We were all seated beneath the huge blue whale that hangs from the ceiling. It was a celebration of 10 years The White House Project has devoted to enhancing women’s progress in a wide variety of fields. As their website indicates, this job is far from over. There have been a lot of derogatory remarks made about "old feminists" lately because Hillary Clinton is in the race for President. But, truth be told, none of us makes it to the top of our fields alone. We all need help. And we all stand on the shoulders of giants. So the next time you read or hear someone disparaging women who’ve stuck their necks out, like the tall tree that catches the wind, trying to advance women’s options, tell them that. We need each other. That doesn’t preclude helping men. It just means we should all consider from time to time what we’ve contributed lately to helping women reach higher levels of business, government, and other fields dominated by men. And getting there is only part of the battle. Staying there requires help from other women too. We’re a long way from both goals and we need each other.

TAGS: Feminism, Leadership, The White House Project, women's equality

But you’ve got to say “no” sometimes and accept that the other person isn’t going to be happy.  I had to do it twice last week — and I did not enjoy it.  Nonetheless, I realized that my interests would not be met if I said yes.

One of the ways women can get in our own way is to try to make others happy at our own expense. Way too often we are so focused on building relationships with others that we forget that we too should expect — and get — consideration. (more…)

TAGS: Building workplace relationships, communication, Communication Skills, negotiation skills, Political skills, Risk-taking, ways to work healthy, women, women and power, Women at Work, Women In the Professions, women leaders

Carol’s insights about leadership led me to think about this topic. As Carol explains, there are a variety of leadership forms and each is more or less suited to particular types of situations. None works for all. But I learned as a youngish woman that having an edge and people knowing you can employ it is very useful.  Most of the time, being able to “do hardball,” as the title above implies, is more important and more useful than doing it. There is something to be said for keeping unsavory people a little unsure of you, not quite able to predict if you will counter in kind or cleverly an insult or offense. They tread somewhat lighter, watch what they say a little bit more carefully. And that can pay big political and professional dividends.

I devoted a fair amount of space in The Secret Handshake and It’s All Politics to examples of comebacks — ways of asserting yourself and advancing your ideas in the face of opposition. Some are graceful, others clever, still others direct and some aggressive. Versatility is key, especially if you work in a highly political environment. Knowing how to lead without being commanding is critical to success. Knowing how to hit back when it really counts is too.

TAGS: Leadership, playing hardball, Politics, versatility