Each quarter I post a review of a leadership/motivational book I recommend to colleagues and friends. Some may be old favorites, others are hot off the press. I am always open to suggestions for books to review. If you have a favorite you'd like to share with others, please contact me.

Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office
101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Career
by Lois Frankel
reviewed by Jerilyn Willin

One of my pet peeves is when females over 21 are called "girls." We can't just blame men for this, women do it to themselves. Even "Sex in the City" a show that celebrated the power, choices and wonder of women as steadfast friends had the characters refer to themselves as girls despite being over 35. Needless to say, when I first saw Lois Frankel's book I was turned off immediately by the title.

But I flipped it open and BAM! I was hooked.

This book will haunt you. You'll see yourself on far too many pages--making mistakes women make which might hold you back in your career. After reading this book you'll be aware of what you're doing. The next step is catching yourself before the fact.

Nice Girls is laid out in eight chapters, which group the "mistakes" into categories. This makes the book quick reading and a terrific resource. It's easy to turn to the mistake you've just made and get ideas of how to prevent yourself from doing it again.

In a previously reviewed book, Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, author Gail Evans talks about the differences between the sexes in the workplace. Frankel takes a different tack.

Frankel advises women to act like women in the workplace, not girls as we may often do. She begins with a 49-item assessment. The assessment indicates where you are currently a woman in behavior and where you are in need of some work. Based on your score, you go to the chapters with the heading of your lowest two scores and see where and how you are "being a girl."

The 101 mistakes are laid out on the left side of the page, with the coaching tips on the right side. The mistakes are described through questions, short lecturettes, and anecdotes followed by coaching tips and ideas to try. The bottom of each page has a box to check if this is an action item for you.

At the end of the book, Frankel has provided a development plan model on which you can list your action items and the ideas you have to "womanize" them. In Appendix the author has pulled together a list of all her recommendations: book titles, tapes, seminars, and websites. It's an incredible list of resources.

Frankel begins at the beginning, discussing how from birth, girls are socialized to be for others rather than to be for ourselves. Traditionally we are more invested in seeing others get their needs met than in ensuring our needs are acknowledged.

A living example occurred while I was reading this book. I had a call from a man I work with who wanted to know if I could come to his site that afternoon. I said I could not. He teased me as a way to get me to change my mind. I stuck to my guns and when he saw he could not cajole me, he said he'd see me on the previously scheduled day. He sounded fine with that. About 15 minutes after we'd hung up a voice in my head said "You should have gone. You're only reading a book. You could have done that when you got home. " Yes, I could have stopped my work and acquiesced, but reading this book is part of my work. Oh the guilt when I put my needs first. Sound familiar?

Business is a game and women often have a negative reaction to the idea of a game. Girls growing up in the 50's and 60's did not have the opportunity to compete in sports, or other activities where they'd have to play to win. The awesome thing is we are born to win this game with our skills for collaboration, relationship building, motivating and listening. What hurts us is that we often don't know the unwritten rules of the business game .

Think for a moment. White men have decided what is appropriate for everyone, including women. Until 1981 when Sandra Day O'Conner came to the Supreme Court, men made rules for the entire country. This book is about that, about learning some of those unwritten rules taught in "boys school."

Mistake #1 addresses this. Business is a game. Playing it doesn't mean you are out to cause others to fail — it means you are aware of the rules and can develop strategies to make them work for your advantage.   Frankel suggests:

• Learn to play chess to develop strategic thinking
• Make a list of the unwritten rules in your workplace
• Play a sport
• Read Hardball for Women

Mistake #3 speaks to working hard. It is not the way to move up. It is a component, but there are other critical factors as well.   The critical factors you need to consider to move ahead are:

• Networking and building relationships,
• Getting assigned to projects to get your face and work known
• Defining your work hours and what you want to accomplish each day

Women with their capacity for building relationships make a mistake when they fail to capitalize on those relationships. We need to use who we know (with their permission). People do business with people they trust, know and like. Connect the dots among people you know in your network.

Frankel spends an entire chapter on how women act in the workplace. She focuses on the subtle, stereotypical ways women behave that contribute to the overall impression of being less competent than they really are.

Some of the behaviors she examines are:

• Needing To Be Liked
  Women need to understand the difference between liked and respected. Needing to be liked may keep us from taking the kinds of risks taken by those who are respected.
• Telling the Whole Truth
  When something goes wrong, women often blame themselves and recite a litany of what they should have done. What do men do? Keep silent and figure out how to avoid doing it again.
• Decorating Our Offices Like Our Living Rooms
• Feeding Others
  Do men have bowls of candy on their desks?
• Using only your nickname or first name at work
  The combo of first and last names makes you an adult.
• Giving away your ideas
  Your ideas have value in the marketplace called work. Each time you contribute an idea that is implemented you've made a sale.

The workplace is a market. YOU are the product. Girls are told not to boast or brag. In adulthood this translates into working in a quiet, unassuming way. Being glad to contribute even if you don't get the deserved credit. Wake up, women!

What are you best known for?

A personal brand is a promise of performance that creates expectations. It communicates values, personality characteristics and abilities of the person behind it.

Can you answer the following?

• What are 3-5 things that bring you the most satisfaction at work?
• Translate those into 3 key strengths
• Consider how these behaviors distinguish you from others.

Frankel busts the career mobility myth by stating the best and the brightest are not rewarded with choice assignments and promotion. Who gets these rewards?

Those who possess a competitive degree of competence and look and sound the part are the ones with career fluidity.

Competence is expected. What puts people over the top is how they look and sound. When it comes to credibility, Frankel says 90% of it is how you look and sound.

A few common mistakes include:

• Posing statements as questions ("The meeting is at 2:00 pm, right?")
• Using preambles (I may be wrong, but...")
• Asking permission
• Minimizing words (just, little, only)
• Speaking too softly
• Smiling inappropriately
• Taking up too little space — keep elbow on the table
• Sitting on foot
• Grooming in public
• Wearing reading glasses around your neck

Does any of this sound like you? As I said at the start of this review, the book will haunt you.

Awareness is the first step to behavior change and Nice Girls gets five stars for awareness building. It also gets high marks for readability, solution generation and being a true resource.

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