How to get over the nice speed bump

As we sat down for our monthly coaching meeting, a female executive client who we will call Anna, senior regulatory executive in the insurance industry, looked tired and run down. I asked her what was going on?  She said sometimes I just want a break...I attended an industry networking event and all these people kept interrupting my conversations with my friends. They wanted introductions, they were looking for jobs, they were new to New York. How could I refuse? I am a nice person and I don’t want to be like "Betsy Jones" (a senior woman executive at her bank that snubs everyone below her level). I came a poor family, got a scholarship to law school and now have a high paying job, a solid marriage, and an adorable daughter. Most of all, I couldn’t have made it in NYC without this organization; they helped me when I needed a community, support and work.

What Anna was sharing is what I hear from many women - they sacrifice their own well-being, play it safe, and silence their voices.  Research shows that women’s identity tend to be defined by the quality of their relationships versus their status in the world; and, has proven that when a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women whereas when a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less. Most women accept that is better to sacrifice their own well-being and needs than to not be liked. They can justify NOT being nice to themselves because they are helping others or a larger cause.As a result, most women tend to play it conservatively. I learned this as a young competitive tennis player. I never wanted to play a competitive tennis match against a friend because I was afraid either I wouldn’t like them if they beat me badly or they wouldn’t like me if the situation was reversed.  This led me to opt out of pursuing a career as a singles player, choosing to play doubles instead as it was more comfortable and compatible with my identity as a young girl who wanted to be liked. This strategy was confirmed by several of my C-Suite clients who admitted to keeping quiet and not offering too many ideas or challenges when in meetings with senior male executives. The problem with these strategies is that GREAT things can't be accomplished without bringing your best self to the table.  As Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state said,  “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”So how do you break out of this trap?  I want to offer a simple option that leverages women’s strengths as relationship builders with a twist. There are a lot of seminars and books that emphasize assertiveness skills as core techniques for women to succeed. But those assertiveness skills won’t yield lasting results unless you have expanded your self-awareness and change the underlying story you tell yourself.What I consistently see in the women I coach is an underlying “should” message that says something like, “Don’t be too selfish”, “Don’t put yourself first” or “Don’t brag” because you won’t be liked and therefore will be less successful.  These “should"s lack anything about accepting your own ambition, putting your own needs first, or seeking out support from mentors and sponsors.  Given all the negative cultural baggage that most women of ALL ages carry around, the recommended strategy that has yielded results for my friends and I is to form a unique version of a support group. We call our group, "WE ARE NOT A NICE GROUP". We meet every 6 weeks at one of the members' homes for dinner in which everyone brings something, including wine. The goal of this group is to create a safe place in which you share your shoulds, ambitions, and challenges and your fellow supporters ALL AGREE TO OFFER HONEST COMPASSIONATE FEEDBACK AND ADVICE. It is a radical idea to be an ambitious woman in this world because anytime you are doing something that is uncommon, you are taking a BIG risk; therefore, the best way to minimize it is to seek out support of peers.In my NOT NICE GROUP, one of our members, a 70-year old woman who I will call Deb, was starting to believe that she was too old to travel and do freelance journalism. We first challenged her negative self-assessment and then encouraged her to follow her passion of traveling to the Middle East to do a story on refugees. She came rejuvenated about life and feeling young again. Then, another member was diagnosed with a serious but not life threatening illness and needed help. She is a working mother with two teenage daughters and her husband recently lost his job. To alleviate some stress, we questioned if she could ask her husband to do more and share her illness with her daughters for help. She left galvanized with a concrete action plan.We all need encouragement but without honest feedback, we can’t grow.  Research shows women in general tend to get less honest feedback in the workplace. The problem is that if women don’t ask for feedback at work, our reputation suffers, people say things behind your back, gossip, and worst of all, we end up playing it small and safe.  The best way to live an energized life is to build FEEDBACK RESILIENCE by asking for and receiving feedback regularly in a safe environment.What Adam Grant shows in this month’s recommended reading Originals – How Non-Confirmists Move the World, is that if you want to increase the success of a new idea being adopted, you need to seek out feedback more often from peers versus managers. Why? Managers tend to have an evaluative mindset whereas peers have more similar experience and will provide more useful feedback.So, I encourage all of you to form your own NOT NICE GROUP with at least three friends and the only rules are:  honest feedback, compassion, listening, and commitment to each other’s growth and well being.  And, of course it helps to serve wine!  Please send me your thoughts.