The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate by Fran Hauser
What’s it about: In a nutshell, how to own your niceness AND be successful at what you do. The book is based on her experience in different industries, and she talks about her evolution from a “yessing the client to death” person to owning her niceness and reminding people not to mistake it for stupidity. She has examples and recommendations and advice and heartfelt reflections -- she does not minimize what research has proven, that women are held to double standards and penalized for not conforming to ‘feminine’ traits.
Noteworthy excerpts:
“If your kindness is the foundation for your friendship and it’s authentic, that relationship can stand strong. But if that kindness is fake, your relationship will inevitably topple. It all goes back to trust. If you’re inauthentic, people won’t trust you. And without trust, there is no relationship. Research shows that our instincts tell us to ask ourselves two questions when we first meet someone: “Can I trust this person?” and “Can I respect this person?” We look to a person’s genuine warmth and competence to answer these two questions.”
“When you make a decision, own it. Never apologize for your decision - even if you have to revisit it later or the results are not what you wanted. When I've made a decision that didn't garner positive results, I've said, "We made the best decision we could based on the facts at the time, but given where we are now as a company and what our goals are, we now need to revisit this decision.”
"Remember to draw a line between being nice in a strong way and simply being a people pleaser. Nice: Positive, yet honest and straightforward. People pleaser: Sweeping things under the rug to avoid making waves.”
Why it resonated with me:
I’ve been working for a decade now, and I am still occasionally unsure if I am being too nice or too critical in meetings and interactions. I always feel the urge to use humor to deflect possible discomfort, and occasionally I just feel plain stupid. One of the advantages I have, which a presentation coach told me in my twenties at my second job: “being soft-spoken can be an issue, but you don’t have that problem”. Usually people can hear me, although like most, I’ve been spoken over as well. I’m getting better at managing that and this book is the most practical book I’ve ever read on being authentically nice and effective at work.