Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do: Nine Secrets Every Career Woman Must Know by White Kate

Author:White, Kate [White, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business
ISBN: 9780446554794
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7600166
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 1995-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Strategy #5: A Gutsy Girl Walks and Talks Like a Winner

This is a chapter about style versus substance. Though perhaps I should rephrase that just a little. This is a chapter about style and substance.

Okay, I know you're feeling tempted to skip over this section, but please don't. To a good girl, style is a frivolous word, even a dirty word, because it's the antithesis of the ethic she works by. A good girl believes that success should be based on the quality of her work, not on how good she looks or sounds. When she sees rewards handed to someone who simply talks a good game for worse, simply looks the part), she's appalled. She may conclude that the person making the decision has his values out of whack—or perhaps he is simply overwhelmed by a throbbing in his groin. A good-girl friend of mine complained to me the other day that a very flashy woman in her company had just gotten a VP title, which has always eluded my friend. “It's not fair,” she said. “I've paid my dues and she hasn't. They ought to call her vice president of pizzazz.”

The truth is that paying your dues in the form of accomplishing certain goals doesn't necessarily get you into the club you want to belong to. You have to look and sound like you deserve to be a member. The reason I didn't say you also have to look and sound the part is that in some cases looking and sounding alone are enough, as much as it might gall us to realize that. I once briefly had a woman on my staff who didn't have enough skill to edit a menu, but she went on to land one great job after another. This drove the people who worked under her nutty because to them she had such a shortage of real talent. Yet she speaks with utter assurance and dynamism, dresses beautifully, and when you are in her presence you're convinced she is a megastar.

Will her lack of substance catch up with her? Maybe. But maybe not. What you have to do is stop being annoyed by women like her and focus on the more positive aspect of the image issue. Though style alone can sell you, combining it with substance gives you the double whammy. If you're talented at what you do and mix it with a sizable flash factor, you are almost guaranteed success.

What it really comes down to is taking the idea of gutsiness and translating it to the way you look, sound, and come across. And at times that will mean doing something differently from the way you've always been told.

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