One of my best books: Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman

Women make up almost half of today's labour force, but in corporate America they don't share half of the power. Only four of the Fortune 500 company CEOs are women, and it's only been in the last few years that even half of the Fortune 500 companies have more than one female officer.A major reason for this? Most women were never taught how to play the game of business.Throughout her career in the super-competitive, male-dominated media industry, Gail Evans, one of the country's most powerful executives, has met innumerable women who tell her that they feel lost in the workplace, almost as if they were playing a game without knowing the directions.She tells them that's exactly the case: Business is indeed a game, and like any game, there are rules to playing well. For the most part, Gail has discovered, women don't know them.Men know these rules because they wrote them, but women often feel shut out of the process because they don't know when to speak up, when to ask for responsibility, what to say at an interview, and a lot of other key moves that can make or break a career.Now, in her book Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, Gail Evans reveals the secrets to the playbook of success and teaches women at all levels of the organization--from assistant to vice president--how to play the game of business to their advantage.

Key highlights:

You are who you say you are – if you want to take charge of your own business life, begin by sending out a message about yourself – pick your goal and convince yourself that you can be successful. Don’t complain or accept the role of victim.One prize doesn’t fit all. Today women are learning to pay attention to their own needs, as well as everyone else’s. Our jobs are not about husbands or children or parents – ideally they are about us. Men reconcile doing work they don’t like by getting high profile rewards. Women are more likely to find work they like and stay there. When we choose to fulfill ourselves by what we do, instead of what we make, we’re not playing the game the way the guys are playing it. If you opt not to play by men’s rules, you have to be aware of the consequences.Work isn’t a sorority. Women enter the job arena with a stronger urge to form and maintain relationships than men do. In this new age of business, where maintaining and servicing clients is so important, a woman’s disposition to form strong relationships will work to her advantage. The hazard to having a relationship orientation is that women interpret basic information in personal terms.Set the right goal. Inflexible goals impede new possibilities. The mark of a good player is the ability to improvise: sticking to a specific plan leading to a specific goal limits your ability to do so. Combine good strategic plan with vision. Goals stop possibility; vision creates them. Having a vision also means taking advantage of an opportunity that can make it real.Don’t expect to make friends. Work is no more about friendship than a tough competitive sport is. Men are clear that business is business, and personal is personal. When they disagree about job- related matters, they don’t see each other as unsupportive or uncaring or disloyal.Accept uncertainty. Unlike men who owe their success to a lot of factors, women assume we get ahead because we’re better at our job than anyone else. As a result, over the years we’ve adopted a perfectionist model. We don’t say we know something unless we are completely confident that we do. Men start the game confident and so have a much better chance of triumphing. Most difficult situations that arise at work have no precedent. Learn to make it up as you go.Be an imposter. Women enter the workplace convinced that the only way to advance is to master our subject backwards and forward. We collect information, we accumulate anecdotes, and we do whatever it takes to get the job done. When we make a presentation, we make sure there is nothing missed – thoroughly over prepared and overeducated. The problem is that eventually you can’t know everything. Everyone is an imposter. Business is no different from life. Men know that. They fake it whenever and wherever they have to. They rely on improvisation, self-confidence and the generalized ability to draw on past experience rather than book knowledge. In business, when you’re doing something new, there is no safety net. That is how creative business ideas are advanced. Replace your imposter scenario with a self-confident one. Confidence is half the game.Think small. Women tend to multi-task and get overwhelmed. Men take on one thing, concentrate on it, finish it, and then move on to the next thing. Men can work like this because the larger picture doesn’t distract them. Men compartmentalize.Laugh. Guys learned long ago that humor could cut the tension in any situation. Women’s humor is much different from men’s. It leans more toward the observational, the situational.Things Men Can Do at Work That Women Can’t

1. They can cry, you can’t
2. They can have sex, you can’t
3. They can fidget, you can’t
4. They can yell. You can’t
5. They can have bad manners, you can’t

He Hears She Hears: Ten Gender-Bender Vocabulary Words

1. Yes (exactly what it means)
2. No (not what it means)
3. Hope (the worst word in the game) Hope is one of the most un-empowering words.
4. Guilt (it means trouble)
5. Sorry (it’s a sorry word).
6. Aggressive (it’s not assertive) For women, aggressive implies hostility, meanness, ruthlessness. Men reserve the positive connotations for themselves and the negative ones to us.
7. Fight (It’s not a pretty word) if you get into a fight at the office a woman thinks of it as all-out warfare, he only thinks of it as a skirmish.
8. Game (a.k.a. Fun) Guys have turned business into a game. It helps them devise new plays, invent new tactics, create new strategies to trounce their opponents. It allows them to have fun while they work.
9. Glass ceiling (their phrase, not ours). The glass ceiling, a transparent barrier at the top of each corporation through which women can’t pass, isn’t possible. It is purely a male invention (like the Forbidden Zone). It gives men an excuse for their failure to treat women as equals. It’s true that many of us get stopped on the way up, but we can’t just blame the ceiling. Many complex factors are involved:
   1. We have a desire for life balance.
   2. We don’t tend to take the positions that lead to the top.
   3. A lack of self-confidence.
10. Future (Then and Now). Women think of the future in terms of years, men in far shorter tie frames.

The Final Two Rules:

1. Be a woman. Use every one of your natural traits. Use your win-win attitude about life to make everyone you meet feel like a valued member of the team. Use your social skills. Most of all use your intuition it is one of the most powerful tools women have in the marketplace.
2. Be yourself. Find a comfortable fit between who you are and the environment in which you work.