Flirting: “it’s the women who flirt—not the men—who become the butt of office jokes”. And if you flirt with the boss, your colleagues will think of you as an enemy and cut you off the grapevine From the outset I want you to know and, even more important, believe that the mistakes impeding you from reaching your career goals or potential don't happen because you're stupid or incompetent (although others might want to make you think so). You are simply acting in ways consistent with your socialization or in response to cultural expectations. Beyond girlhood, no one ever tells us that acting differently is an option—and so we don't. Whether it's because we are explicitly discouraged from doing so, because social messages inform our behavior, or because we are unaware of the alternatives, we often fail to develop a repertoire of woman-appropriate behaviors. In many ways, “Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office” is about how women live according to the rules established by men. Men define the rules for the playing field, heavily influence behaviours that are acceptable for women and people of colour inside and outside of the workplace (it certainly isn’t the other way around). Living our lives this way narrowly circumscribes the choices we make. Like air pollution, if you live in it and breathe it for long enough, you come to believe that’s just how the air is supposed to be. Lois P. Frankel Particularly within the start-up landscape, it is not unusual to hear the “we don’t worry about titles” trope. And yes, we might work on many different areas of responsibility and our scope of tasks might be broad as hell, but be a little too lax when it comes to your job title for long enough and you might end up finding yourself in a position where your title doesn’t match your scope of responsibility, along with the confusion that comes along with it.

Sharing Too Much Personal Information: don’t entirely withhold personal information, but don’t over-share, either I loved this and I hated this. Lois P. Frankel is a total pragmatist, which can be tough for an idealist like me to swallow. Throughout "Nice Girls" she argues that women who want to get ahead in business have to learn to play by the rules created by white men in corporate America. We have to learn to live and play within that structure.

Stop internalizing messages. I need to read "The Drama of the Gifted Child"--how parenting (sorry, Mom...) placed unrealistically high expectations on them. I wonder if this is why I have such a horrible case of 'Impostor Syndrome.'

Acting Like a Man: the double standard is real. Women behaving like men create dissonance. Unless it comes natural to you, don’t put an act of being like a man So today’s read is going to be slightly different from the topics I usually cover in this blog, and chances are, also a little bit more controversial.In fact, a modest 8 percent of all top executives worldwide are women, and there are no more than twenty female heads of state throughout the world. Taking Notes, Getting Coffee, and Making Copies: propose you take turns, propose the more junior employee does it, or refuse by saying you did the last Being Overly Concerned with Offending Others: if you expressed yourself without being offensive, then don’t fall for it, it’s a ploy Written by top career coach L.P.Frankel, ‘101 mistakes’ aims to guide women away from the ‘act like a girl’ stereotypes taught to them as young ladies, which according to the author they carry onto womanhood. Maybe this book and this attitude works in some corporations, but I believe you can be a successful woman without completely erasing your feminine personality to act more like a man. There are chapters where the author specifically said to put aside any femininity, to dress like a man and wear only dark colors because that's what men do.

As if there aren’t one hundred other reasons women’s progression at work, how much they are paid, or how they are treated compared men put a damper on their careers. There are many other social reasons for this and to ignore then I think is just naive. Stop using "upspeak"--making every statement sound like a question. I think I've gotten myself out of this this completely, but I know that I'm much more likely to couch opinions as questions, which I need to stop. Be assertive! Although there is a lot of empty fluff and even some outdated non-sense advice in that long list of “mistakes”, there are some other roles and attitudes which I believe many women can commonly associate themselves with. I say ‘the right words’ because Lois P. Frankel left me with very mixed feelings. I loved it and hated it. All in all, less is more. Get comfortable with the silence after delivering a short, direct and to-the-point message. 5. Being too modest, and apologizing more than you should.Even in Western countries, women are still not on an equal footing with men. There are many reasons for this inequality, most of which can’t be changed by one woman alone. Waiting to Be Given What You Want:“men take care of their own needs but will often minimize what women are worth or owed”. So don’t wait: ask for what you’re owed Overall although the book had some good and useful nuggets of advice on how to embrace negotiation, speak up, stand up for yourself, become more confident and assertive, or how to navigate different relationships and boundaries at work, most of the message seemed to rely on how to adapt your behavior to act like men and play according to their rules. Personally, if we’re looking for greater equality and more empowered women in the workplace, I don’t think that conforming to the current status quo should be the path to take.