TalentTuning

It's official: nice gals - and guys - finish last!

Read Benja´s book: THE SUCCES TIPPING POINT: The Secret Behind Female Succes.

For years, I tried to be a very nice person at work - a dream colleague, a team player, the sort of woman who gave women a good name in the workplace. I thanked people. I apologised.

I expressed concern. I took responsibility for making things right, even when I wasn't the one who had made them go wrong.

Then one day I looked up from my under-challenging, mid-level job and noticed that my boss, who was generally regarded as kind of a jerk, but a smart and talented one, never, ever thanked people. He never apologised. And he didn't appear to give a rip about what was going on in the lives of anyone around him. He never took responsibility when things went wrong, preferring instead to label someone else the culprit and chew them out.

It suddenly occurred to me: he had gained responsibility, power and a big, cushy salary not despite the fact that he was a jerk, but because of it. Whereas I, arguably no less competent, but assuredly a whole lot more pleasant and agreeable, was drifting along in a rudderless career - friend to all, boss to none.

I'm not alone in my thinking: a recent study examining the relationship between agreeableness, income and gender, published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that the workplace does tend to reward disagreeable behaviour. It found disagreeable men tend to earn more than agreeable men, and disagreeable women, though they earn less than both nice and not-nice guys, earn more than agreeable

The study, Do Nice Guys - and Gals - Really Finish Last?, analysed data from three separate surveys conducted over the past 20 years, including responses from thousands of workers of various ages, salary levels and professions. The authors also asked 460 business students to weigh in on hypothetical personnel decisions.

" 'Niceness' - in the form of the trait of agreeableness - does not appear to pay," the researchers concluded.
Although I could never pull off my boss's level of rudeness (nor would I have wanted to), I nevertheless decided to shed just a bit of my workaday warmth by making two seemingly small changes: to stop saying "thank you" or "I'm sorry". Straightaway. Cold turkey. Just to see what would happen.

I started with email, where I had often signed off with a chipper "thanks!". I was no longer sorry it took so long to get back to anyone. Neither did I feel regretful about asking them to do something or grateful to them in advance for doing it. I reread every message to make sure neither polite phrase had sneaked through. And after I'd excised each self-effacing slip, I hit "send" with a new set to my jaw, a hard glimmer in my eyes.

The effect was immediate: colleagues began to treat me with more respect. Celebrity publicists, a notably power-aware lot whom I often contacted in my job, were more responsive. Even interns (those pecking-order experts) seemed to regard me with a new sort of awe.

Emboldened, I sought to eliminate "sorry" and "thank you" from my spoken workplace interactions, sometimes literally covering my mouth (passing it off as a "thoughtful" pose) to keep from uttering them. I smiled less and bargained harder.

My new confidence gave me the inner wherewithal to launch a freelance business (I'm now my own boss). My career - and my income - lurched upward.

At first, my new sense of power and its rewards felt thrilling. I was paid fairly and it seemed to me that, when people paid more for my work, they tended to value it (and me) more highly. But there were times I pushed too hard and lost jobs. And I began to worry about my reputation. Had my new self-assurance made me overly demanding?

My concerns may have been valid. The study also found that the rewards of disagreeableness for women are limited, far more so than for men. What's more, if women push disagreeable behaviour in the workplace too far, they risk a major backlash.

"If a man is disagreeable, he is thought to be tough and leader-like," one of the study's co-authors, Timothy A. Judge, told me. "If a woman is disagreeable, the 'b-word' is applied to her."

Had I become, as Judge politely put it, a "b-word"?

This past summer, I had a breakthrough. It happened when I wrote an essay that was included in a collection of works by "mommy bloggers". An email group was formed and everyone, in their introductory emails, included a sort of apology ("I've never been included in something like this before!") and an expression of thanks ("I'm so honoured").

Reading through the email chain, I saw these expressions not as displays of powerlessness, but of kindness and candour, and a desire for connection and support. I added my own note of gratitude, and felt the camaraderie surround me like a warm blanket.

I now aim for the middle ground, allowing the occasional "thank you" and apologising if I feel it is justified, though trying not to do either reflexively.

"There is a difference between disagreeing and being disagreeable," Judge says. "Be firm, logical, assertive and persistent, but do not ever show hostility, anger or other negative emotions."

Women are held to different standards of agreeability than men, Judge cautions, adding, "This of course is not fair, but fair does not always describe the world in which we live."

Sorry to break the news. And thanks!

Source: Sunday Life