RSSBook Review : Play Like A Man Win Like A Woman
August 22, 2008
Gail Evans was Executive Vice President of the CNN Newsgroup till her retirement in 2001. She continues speak globally about gender in the workplace. She has successfully played the role of wife, mother, and businesswoman.
Gail Evans
The traditional, male way of doing business is not better than ours. Nor is it worse. It may be out-dated. It may not be productive or imaginative from a woman’s perspective. In fact, it may often be ethically and morally wrong. It is still undeniably real and it is a language that women need some functional understanding of to leverage the male corporate establishment.
The full title of this book is Play Like A Man Win Like A Woman. What Men Know About Success That Women Need To Learn . Its purpose is to help women advance in their occupational environments, often still empires built and run by men. There are, of course, many applications for establishing your voice and your power in the context of daily living.
Ladies are weak. Women are not.
Previously, I wrote about Dr. Lois Frankel’s excellent Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office. Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers. That was a brilliant book and also addresses the ways in which women behave at the office that defeat their own confidence and success. We are raised and conditioned to behave like girls or like ladies. The consequence is that we are perceived as weak. If we could learn to be women, we would be taken more seriously by ourselves and so by others too.
Sometimes, it pays to behave a little more like a man. Their natural style is more effective in some settings. For instance, if you speak more briefly and get to the point, you may feel that you’re being abrupt or terse, but at the office, it comes across as concise and clear-minded.
That’s fine. I’ll take concise over rambling. I’ll take abrupt over weak. In a business setting, I’ll even take abrupt over kind, but I’ll think of it as being direct.
The game called Work
Play Like A Man presents the word of work as a game, because that’s how men handle it. There were only men around when the rules of office behavior were being written, so they inherently understand them. Women were at home during this time, so the rules are not as clear to us, and often are not consistent with how society has taught us to behave in order to get what we want.
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The examples and analogies are drawn from the context of playing a game. A ball must go into a net. There must be a winner and a loser. The first chapter explores the differences in how girls and boys play and how this sets the stage for adult life. It was incredibly interesting. We are hard-coded as children to explore relationships. Boys are wired to win or lose; the teams are chosen and the game has a definite beginning and ending.
Ms. Evans also considers the contrast between how men and women define success. For men, it’s money. For women, it’s complicated. It has to do with empowerment, with fulfillment, and with how work impinges on the other aspects of our lives. Everything is connected. Not so for the guys.
No victims
Ms. Evans is fully cognizant of the demands of family but is unwilling to assign or allow the label of victim because of it. She sees women’s reluctance to ask for help and men’s reluctance to offer, or see that it is needed. She exposes the common stereotypes of female behavior and advises how to avoid at all costs fitting into those molds.
She describes when to act like one of the guys and when not to. There is a section devoted to handling interviews. As in Dr. Frankel’s book, Ms Evans contrasts the willingness and comfort that men have with winging it and trying a job without knowing anything about it, and faking it while you’re still learning, with a woman’s anxiety about that situation. She details the 6 things men can do that women can’t and the 10 words that carry different connotation when used by men and by women.
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This woman has lived the mom role and the businesswoman role. She speaks frankly about real trade-offs, and I love nothing more than genuine down-and-dirty dialogue. Superficial fluff gets me nowhere. As all women know, we will pay a hefty price for doing it all. The price will be us, or some part of us – our head, our body, our spirit, something will give.
Be yourself, know yourself
The final chapters are empowering. Allowing yourself to be female, and exploiting all the strengths associated with that, is inspirational. Being true to yourself and learning to sense the undercurrent of disquiet when a situation doesn’t jive with who you really know yourself to be is the substance of her parting words.
When you close the book, you will feel motivated to succeed on your terms. You will also understand at a new level of depth and detail why some women succeed and some do not in the boys club of business. That club might not be attractive. At times, it may be downright disgusting. But like it or not, it does exist. If being part of it appeals to you, this book will be valuable to you. If you learn from Play Like A Man that you don’t belong in that atmosphere, that’s also a step forward.
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Comments
2 Responses to “Book Review : Play Like A Man Win Like A Woman”
Got something to say? I hope so.
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A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
My first response was ‘where was this 8 months ago?’ Then reflection set in. I am better off, if not financially, where I am now. Sometimes you’re meant to be where you are, at a moment in time.
Nanci,
When I get down off my striving-and-planning horse (which seems to be my default position) for long enough to look back at where life has put me, I see that we are all exactly where we’re meant to be, at every moment in time. When we are given what we think we need or want at the wrong time, we can’t see it in its fullest form.
There is no question that financial freedom matters but if I focus on it excessively, it puts the wrong spin on everything else. Now, I say to myself “Are your needs being met today? Will your needs be met tomorrow?” . If the answer is Yes, then relax and let financial (and other forms) of success come at you in their own way.
What Gail writes in her book still has tremendous value in finding confidence and power as a woman, whatever the present context. Who knows? It may lead to being recognized by someone in a different way than you would have been previously and open doors that might have stayed invisible to you.
At worst, it caused some reflection and the realization that things for you are right just as they are - a great thing to know!