The Likeability Trap by Alicia Menendez

Author:Alicia Menendez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Angry Women Everywhere

I am standing in a conference room in midtown Manhattan, waiting for Carly Fiorina. I’m curious how Carly, as a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a 2016 presidential hopeful, has experienced the pressure to be likeable in these various contexts. As I gaze out the wall-to-wall windows, I realize that the building directly next to ours is Trump Tower. Oops. I consider pulling the blinds down and praying that Carly doesn’t have a very good sense of Manhattan’s geography. After all, a reminder of a competitor who not only triumphed but offended you in the process must taint the view.

When Carly walks in, she is unbothered. She even lets out a genuine laugh. Her skin is thicker than mine.

In a campaign full of explosive moments, a restrained exchange from the 2016 presidential election remains etched on my mind. In the lead-up to the second Republican primary debate, Rolling Stone reported that Trump had mocked Carly’s looks. “Look at that face,” he said offhandedly to a reporter as he watched Carly on television. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”1

Trump caught flack for the comment. He backpedaled, insisting that he was referring to Fiorina’s persona, not her looks. Now, on the national stage, millions of eyes focused on her, Fiorina, the only woman in a sea of ten male candidates, would get a chance to respond. CNN’s Jake Tapper, the debate moderator, prompted Fiorina for her thoughts on Trump’s remarks, and—lol—his persona.

As a producer, I can tell you that the question was designed to create a clippable moment, the kind of exchange that can be played over and over again on cable news and smartphones across America. In the brief pause between Tapper’s question and Fiorina’s answer, the crowd collectively chuckled. In my own mind, the laughter was followed by the almost faint bumping of fists against tables and chants of “Fight, fight, fight.” It was an opportunity for Fiorina to swing back, hard. The question begged for an angry response, or at least an equally immature retort.

That was far from the approach Fiorina took.

Early in her career, Fiorina read a piece of advice about using one’s temper that would come in handy in this moment: Use it. Don’t lose it. Fiorina’s career—rising from a secretary to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company—had provided ample opportunities to test this counsel.

While at AT&T, Fiorina encountered a division manager who needed Fiorina’s team to provide him research and support. The manager felt Fiorina’s team wasn’t delivering fast enough, and on one occasion he was so rough with her staff that he left them in tears. “He was abusive beyond belief,” Fiorina tells me. “And most of the people who he was abusing were women.”

Carly knew what she needed to do. “I knew what the right thing was. It was to tell him to back off. It was to protect my people,” Fiorina tells me. But she also knew that challenging him was a risky move.

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