Nice Girls Finish Second

We all know the story.

Young woman, newly minted from college whose work experience consists of an internship or two, gets a job with a large, male-dominated organization and quickly befriends one of the few other females in the office: an older, more experienced, maternal figure who knows the ropes and seems willing to teach her.

The two soon become inseparable, not only spending lunch breaks together but also socializing on their own time as well. The younger woman thinks nothing of calling her new pal to shoot the breeze--or share her most intimate secrets.

Oops, too bad she doesn’t notice the tape recorder was running.

The tale of Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, of course, is significant for many reasons. But it is also a story of a workplace betrayal, the most nasty and painful manifestation of office politics.

Their case represents the classic office scenario of a young woman who confuses work with a sorority party and ends up badly burned when her trust proves misplaced. And while the Tripp-Lewinsky meltdown is an extreme example, there is a moral to the story: Be careful about forming close friendships on the job, especially if you are looking to move up the ladder.

“Be friendly to people but not best buddies,” says Charlene Walker, a partner in the career development firm Womens Focus in Tustin. “Many women are still too open and share too many confidences in the office environment.”

The danger, career counselors say, is that not only is it a time waster that distracts you from your goals, it’s possible that what you say, no matter how innocuous, can be used against you.

Women in particular are vulnerable to bonding too quickly with office mates. Although we think we are merely sharing war stories when we relate our baby-sitting hassles or complain about hubby leaving the lid up, we could be sending the wrong signals. Next time promotions are handed out and you’re up against one of your cubicle pals, that idle chitchat can become ammunition.

“They can say, ‘All Mary talks about are her child-care problems. She seems to have a lot of stuff going on, so let’s promote someone else,’ ” Walker says.

Though it’s much too late for Monica, the rest of us can learn a lesson from her loose lips. You never really know who your friends are at the office.

And while no one advocates becoming an office troll, it’s better to hold off forming even casual relationships until you have a chance to size up other guys’ agendas.

“It’s like a second job,” says Walker, whose firm has written a booklet, “10 Office Politics Tips,” for clients who need help navigating the office minefields without being blown up. No. 1 is Mind Your Own Business.

But you don’t have to be so paranoid that you never lift your nose from the grindstone. Instead, learn to swim with the office sharks without becoming one yourself. That means listening to others, gathering information, and taking time before you speak instead of regretting what you said. That is, learning how to be a good office politician.

“It’s important to operate as someone who is confident but vigilant,” says Stanlee Phelps, an executive coach at the Irvine office of the careers services firm Lee Hecht Harrison. “I try hard to get people to look at the process as an awareness process, which means to empower yourself, to communicate better and to understand messages from others.”

It seems so simple. But the unfortunate truth is that most women, because of centuries of socialization, are far less skilled at playing office politics--even the good kind--than men. After all, men are from Mars and these Martians fell to Earth and created the modern workplace in the Martian style. Only now is it being adapted to make room for those of us from Venus.

“Women are newer to the work scene and we need to learn how the games are played,” says Phelps, who also is the author of “The Assertive Woman.” “Women have not been coached or trained--through the military or through sports--in that sort of maneuvering. You don’t learn that from playing [with] dolls.”

But being the outsider--the Venusian entering the Martian-dominated workplace--can be a workplace plus, says Ronna Lichtenberg, a former senior vice president at Prudential Securities who was one of a handful of women on Wall Street when she began her career.

“For some people I think it’s an advantage to be an outsider. That was one thing that was healthy for me, because you have to pay more attention to what’s going on than you would if you’re part of the group,” she says.

But many women tend to regard office politics as: a) sleazy and therefore beneath them, b) a chance to act on their petty jealousies and perfect the art of back-stabbing, or c) nonexistent.

“One of the things I still run into today are women believing that ‘If I’m a good girl good things will happen’ and that good work speaks for itself,” Phelps says. “I can’t believe how many people believe that.”

And forget about fairness too. “Business has nothing to do with fairness or even exemplary job performance,” she says.

But many women tend to play by the rules in order to demonstrate they can be team players and handle any project that comes their way, even the dead-end ones that Charlie in the next cubicle would quickly take a pass on. At the same time, many women are reluctant to discuss their accomplishments or push their ideas forcefully.

“On their resumes, women will say things like ‘we’ or ‘my team,’ where a guy who was even remotely involved in a project will use it as a bullet point on his resume,” Phelps says. “Women don’t want to be perceived as being too aggressive.”

But the tendency to downplay one’s strengths can be damaging, particularly at raise time.

“Women will undersell themselves, men oversell, particularly in salary negotiations,” Walker says. “I have to tell women to beef it up, to speak confidently about your background.”

When women get together over the proverbial water cooler or in the women’s room, “we tend to talk more about our vulnerabilities than our achievements,” says Lichtenberg, who is head of the New York consulting firm Clear Peak Communications and the author of “Work Would Be Great if It Weren’t for the People.”

“When I talk to women’s groups . . . I would never stand up in front of women and say, oh by the way, ‘I’m a really big deal and I went to Harvard and this, that and the other.’ But that doesn’t mean in the course of negotiating my way through the system I wasn’t good . . . at making sure that people knew what was going on with me.”

And that’s where women’s social conditioning can work to their advantage. “Women have an easier time saying ‘Oh, I blew that,’ ” Lichtenberg says, and therefore are likely to be more open to learning from their mistakes and moving on. “The men, they’re not doing that.”

“I think that guys are terrified about talking about their vulnerabilities in public and so they don’t. And that’s why they will cover them up by talking about their achievements.”

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Without a doubt there are many women throughout corporate America, those who have broken the glass ceiling and have penetrated board rooms and the elite management ranks, who have learned to successfully operate in the Martian world. But even they probably had to prove themselves in ways that aren’t demanded of men.

“There is still a myth of the too emotional woman,” Phelps says. “Men are given permission to be emotional, to be angry, vengeful. But a woman who shows a similar emotion is labeled a barracuda, or the ‘b’ word. And that word will still stop a woman dead in her tracks . . . completely de-power her in a second.”

Women in particular seem to be more upset when other people think they aren’t being nice, says Lichtenberg, who regularly dispenses advice to workplace warriors through her Web site at https://www.officepolitics.com.

“I will get from young women that somebody thinks they’re a bitch. That always happens as soon as you try to get anything done, someone thinks ill of you and they talk about you--which is great news because if they’re not gossiping about you you’re not really doing very much,” she says.

Women need to understand that “if you’re going to get things done, that means you are pursuing something that other people may not like and at that same moment they may not like you,” she says.

For many professional women being subjected to the ‘b’ word is a rite of passage.

“It’s more painful when it happens . . . but I haven’t really seen it stop anybody.”