101 Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers

Excerpted from
Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers
By Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D.

Mistake 2: Playing the Game Safely and within Bounds

As an avid but quite average tennis player, I used to hit the ball squarely within bounds for fear of going out and losing the point. In an effort to play safely, I artificially narrowed my playing field. After a while, it occurred to me that I would never win the game playing that way. I had to learn to hit the ball toward the edges of, yet within, bounds if I ever hoped to win. So I started going outside my comfort zone and found that I actually won more games.

I had the opportunity to use this analogy with a client who was recently promoted to supervisor and getting feedback she wasn't "proactive" enough. "How can I be accused of not being proactive?" she wondered. "I do everything I'm supposed to without being asked." Doing everything you're supposed to isn't proactive. It's only doing what you're supposed to. At her new level, management expected her to take more responsibility and make decisions independently. When I suggested this to her, she said she didn't want to overstep her authority, so she ran most important decisions by her supervisor first.

I asked the woman if she played tennis and, fortunately, she did. Within moments of using the analogy of playing it safe in tennis, she got it. She could understand how she wasn't using all die court available to her. By making assumptions about what would and wouldn't be acceptable to her management, she narrowed her playing field. Rather than risking hitting the ball out of bounds, she only engaged in behaviors she knew would land the ball squarely within the court. It wasn't enough for the woman's manager, who wanted her team members to take calculated risks and go beyond what was asked of them.

This same phenomenon plays out in the workplace all the time. Even when a woman knows the workplace is a game, she has the tendency to play safe rather than play smart. She obeys all the rules to the letter and expects others to as well. If the policy says don't do it, then it can't be done. If it might upset someone, she doesn't do it. You never want to act unethically, but it is a game-and one you want to win. To do so you have to use the entire field available to you.

In my client's case, she followed my suggestion to ask her manager to help her define her scope of authority so that she would feel more comfortable taking risks. The manager called me several weeks later and, during the course of conversation about another matter, mentioned that the woman was now showing more initiative and meeting her performance objectives.

Mistake 3: Working Hard

There's a popular saying: Women have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. As a result, women are like little ants-working, working, working. They complain that they do more than everyone else, and they do! It's a myth that people get ahead because they work hard. The truth is, no one ever got promoted purely because of hard work. Likability, strategic thinking, networking, being a team player are but a few of the other factors that go into crafting a successful career.

Everyone is expected to carry his or her fair share of the weight. This doesn't mean you should focus exclusively on working hard. Sometimes I think women do so because it's easier to do what we know best, rather than to engage in behaviors that seem foreign to you. One woman complained to me about the guys she worked with who, every Monday morning during football season, spent the first half hour of the day rehashing Sunday's games with the boss.

"What a waste of time. Here I am working away and they're talking about football!" she lamented. What bothered her even more was the fact these same guys were being tapped for prime assignments. Whereas women sec it as "wasting the company's money" to do anything other than focus on the task at hand between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M., men know that whether it's talking about football or last weekend's golf scores, they're building relationships that will later work for them. In this situation her male coworkers were bonding with the boss in a way that allowed him to better know these team members. As a result, when growth opportunities became available, he picked them because he was familiar and comfortable with them.

And herein lies one of business's best-kept secrets. People aren't hired and promoted simply because they work hard. It happens because the decision maker knows the character of the person and feels confident about his or her ability not only to do the job, but also to do it in a way that promotes collegial team relationships. By keeping her nose to the grindstone, the woman was actually acting in a way detrimental to getting what she most wanted-more interesting work and an opportunity to show she was capable of doing more.

Mistake 4: Doing the Work of Others

When Harry S. Truman said, "The buck stops here," surely he was thinking of a woman. Our tendency to take responsibility for not only our own work but also the work of others is yet another self-defeating behavior. Yes, you have a responsibility to your employer to ensure the delivery of a high-quality product or service, but it is not your responsibility alone. Women have a nasty habit of saying, "Well, if I don't do it, no one else will." This only ensures that you'll be doing it-and for a l-o-n-g time.

And there's another problem associated with taking too much responsibility. While women are doing the grunt work, men are building their careers. They're no fools. Promotions are rewards for getting the job done, not necessarily doing the job. I had a boss once who told me there are two kinds of people in the world: careerists and achievers. Achievers keep busy by doing the work. Careerists spend their time managing their careers. Truth be known, you've got to be a little of both to get ahead.