High Powered Women Pt. 1: Playing to Win

My last post described the division of labor in the office; and while it remains true that most of the Head Honchos are white dudes, there are a few exceptions. Four women in the office hold high-powered jobs, three of them started in the last year. So they're making some progress in diversifying the top spots, which is a good thing (but NO people of color at the moment so not great). However, not all women in powerful positions are feminists, and it’s interesting to watch the elite women in this office either conform to or confront the male-dominated environment and how people react to women in power.

One of these women is a VP in Sales, which basically makes her a professional motivator and all-around deal maker. She manages the sales people; figuring out how to make them more efficient selling machines- theories on which she likes to explore during 2 hour meetings every Monday. Not wildly popular. People describe her as a "go-getter" at best, but most descriptions are closer to "total bitch". I have to say that I am definitively NOT a fan of the b-word, especially not when it's used to describe successful powerful women who do their jobs and don't coddle (read: mother) their employees.

It's not that I personally admire her rigid adherence to numbers or her quantifying people into A, B and C levels based on performance (seriously, I typed that memo, she means it); its just that I doubt a male VP of sales who pushed his employees just as hard would be called names with the same force and frequency that she is. And even if he were, I don't think there's an equal slur for men; bitch is a term used specifically for women who violate the invisible boundaries of appropriately lady-like behavior (or for men who are being insulted for acting like women- but that's another issue).

So I don’t love this woman, but I wouldn’t call her a bitch either. What I would call her is a person desperately in need of a new lexicon. Because she makes sports metaphors All. Day. Long.

Granted, the metaphors are probably one way she can fit in to the good-old-boy network of major corporate business. What I mean is- in an industry where deals have traditionally been closed in male-dominated spaces like cigar bars and the golf course- you have to know the lingo in order to operate in that environment. What we should be talking about is changing the environment altogether rather than conforming to the norms of corporate culture. Then maybe I (and the people stuck in those 2 hour meetings) wouldn’t have to listen to the following:

"This isn't about intercepting the ball it's about putting it in the hoop!" (I think this was about closing sales- but really it could have been about anything.)

"Knock it out of the ballpark guys!"

"You've got to lean into the wind, antennae up!" (unclear what sport this is, NASCAR? skiing? ant skiing perhaps...)

Yeesh.

I’ll talk about the other powerful ladies another time, but for now just put your head down and push through the defense- make it to the end zone- and score those points. Or something.