The Boss of You

There is a post over at The New Charm School, a blog writ­ten by Jen­nifer a very savvy career coach, that is bril­liant enough that I’m going to quote the whole darn thing here.

“Climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der is tough. Doing it in 3-inch pumps is tougher, accord­ing to the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Female Executives.”

Let’s just ignore the fact that cliches are the mark of a lazy writer. Am I the only one who finds this image irri­tat­ing, for rea­sons other than the fact that it’s com­pletely overused?

There is a ridicu­lous new “self-help” book out for women called some­thing like “Climb­ing the Cor­po­rate Lad­der in Heels”…I’m so annoyed by the author’s con­ceit that I can’t be both­ered to look it up. Basi­cally, you take a lit­tle quiz to find out how you work, and then read your sec­tion for help­ful career tips. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?

Well, the choices avail­able include CEO…Diva…and Cheer­leader. Is this career advice or a cat­a­log of col­lectible Barbies?

Let me go on record once and for all as say­ing the following:

“Wear­ing heels while climb­ing a lad­der is fool­ish: it’s dan­ger­ous, plus peo­ple can look up your skirt. ”

Part of our moti­va­tion for writ­ing Boss Lady has been to counter the trite and out­dated approaches to women in the busi­ness world that Jen­nifer is lam­bast­ing so very well here. We have a few real groan­ers on our book­shelf, pri­mar­ily for research pur­poses, that rid­dled with bad at best and down­right insult­ing at worst cliches about women suc­ceed­ing in busi­ness or “a woman’s approach” to busi­ness. While we’re not ones to shy away from dis­cus­sions of gen­der, we’re far more inclined to see the women we know choos­ing to wear appro­pri­ate shoes for the task at hand (to fol­low Jennifer’s metaphor) when faced with a lad­der to climb. But bad shoe metaphors aside, The New Charm School seems to be full of excel­lent, on topic advice and kvetch­ing for any think­ing busi­ness gal.