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9 Ways Women Sabotage Their Careers
Barbara Reinhold | Monster
Very few people doubt the corporate deck is stacked against women to some degree. Still, you can sabotage your own career through errors made in the name of doing well or doing more.
Here are nine career stoppers that can prevent you from advancing in your career. Do any of them figure into your modus operandi?
1. Flirting with Men to Get Your Way
This is a strategy that also seems to come naturally, and the short-term gains can be heady. It always comes back to haunt you in the end, however. Get promoted on the quality of your ideas, hard work and ability to enable teams to work together. Leave your other moves to the hours outside of work.
2. Taking Care of Others and Forget About Yourself
Even though females are socialized to be caretakers, if you say yes to everything at work, you’ll end up giving it all away and won’t have time left to do the job at hand. You’ll also undermine the efficacy of others on your team.
3. Thinking of Yourself But Not Others
This is the other side of the dichotomy. If you overcorrect and think only of yourself, then you will probably manage autocratically and have a hard time keeping a team working well together. A career is best lived at the point of creative tension between these two pulls.
4. Being Too Busy to Take Care of Your Health
Would a race car driver start a race with low-octane fuel? Every time you start a day with less than the right amount of sleep for you, pump empty calories into your body or let your body waste away a little more for lack of exercise, you’re compromising your ability to think well and work most productively. An internal whistle blows after eight hours of output, telling all your systems to work with less energy and effectiveness. By working too long without recharging your battery, you destroy your ability to do your best work.
