Advice for Women

Last year before Halloween I was in a Goodwill store and saw a jaunty sleeveless Halloween-themed sweater hanging on the rack. I was excited to buy it because it would afford me a lazy but funny Halloween costume. My wife immediately pointed out that it was a woman’s sweater with buttons on the opposite side from men’s sweaters. Until then I had no idea women’s buttons were on the other side. Nevertheless, I suppressed my queasiness and bought the sweater anyway and have worn it for multiple Halloween occasions. I’ve gotten lots of good comments on it and usually no one even notices it’s for women.

Occasionally I see books, videos, and blogs which give career advice to women. Some examples of this advice include:

“Lean in”
“Chase the dream, not the competition”
“Never stop learning”
“Always negotiate your pay”
“When you have an idea, just start”
“Make your work visible”
“Learning from mistakes is more important than not making them”
“Don’t worry about the opinions of people you wouldn’t go to advice for”
“A career journey isn’t always a straight line”

My favorite Will & Grace episode is the one where Grace saves money on an exercise trainer by copying the moves she sees a trainer do with another client. I think the advice intended for women above is excellent, but it applies equally well to men!

In her book, Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg decries the fact that most C-level executives are men. Her advice intends to help ambitious women achieve the same goals as the men who reached the C-suite. Of course nothing should stand in the way of ambitious women. Marie Curie had two children and won the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. What if she had given up on her ambition to make discoveries in chemistry and develop X-rays? The world would have suffered had she not followed her dreams. I believe career advice can be life-changing.

However, Sandberg fails to point out that although most C-level execs are men, most men are not C-level execs. In fact, vanishingly few are! Does she have any advice for men lower on the totem pole? I read in an article that some Black women were put off by the book because they felt excluded.

Lower and mid-level employees of all sexes, races and orientations face similar prospects in a company with, say, 1,000+ employees and only 10 or fewer C-level people. The low-level employees have much more in common with each other than they do with the executives. For that matter, the middle 80% of people in the wealth spectrum in this country have more in common with each other than they do with the top “1%”.

I have an extensive background in data analytics and I understand the value of segmentation when it comes to sales of products and services or treating people with various health conditions. However, I don’t believe that approach carries over to life coaching or career advice. Does it make sense to give career advice specifically to women?

One must take extreme caution when attempting to group people in meaningful ways. Group categorizations can be dehumanizing and have been the source of much of our political strife in recent years. It feels like some malevolent force is trying to take the “divide and conquer” approach toward us as Americans.

I’ve received invaluable career advice from women who supposedly don’t share my “lived experience” as a man.

I was once working on a project with a woman when I asked her, “Hey, do you know when the company is paying out bonuses this year?” She told me the answer but added that it didn’t apply to her because she had negotiated her bonus timing when she took the job. This made me feel moronic. Why hadn’t I negotiated my bonus timing?? It never even occurred to me that that was an option!

In one company where I worked we had a mentoring program. My mentor was a director-level woman from a department related to mine. She mentored me for a few months at the company café. At the time, I was considering career coaching as an activity for myself. She challenged my motives and helped me uncover that I thought I knew better than most people about this area which is why I thought they should listen to me. I realized my way of thinking was counterproductive. She taught me that I should tread lightly and listen more than talk. I’ve since learned to figuratively “walk alongside” others rather than “push them forward”. She never pulled any punches but instead asked challenging, incisive questions which always made me rethink my premises. Her tutelage was incredibly valuable and I miss getting her advice.

Imagine a book with this title:

Career Advice for [insert group name here] People

That sounds offensive to me.

Career advice for a specific group is usually either useful for everybody, regardless of what group they’re in, or it leaves out large portions of the group for which it is intended. Career advice should either be intended for everyone or tailored to one specific person at a time. The group approach is tricky and problematic.