MBA Cutie...

Life on the road to Ross School of Business at U of M... GO BLUE!

Monday, April 17, 2006

Ophelia at Work, Part 1

I was going to write a few pointers on the “What matters most to you and why?” essay, but Ash seems to have beat me to the chase. I’ll try that one out a few weeks from now when everyone is looking for more advice.

I recently started reading a new book, I Can’t Believe She Did That: Why Women Betray Other Women at Work, by Nan Mooney. It’s an interesting exposé on how women interact with each other at work and why women find it so difficult to work with other women in the workplace. Many of you that regularly read my blog know that I’m very interested in the dynamics behind female to female relationships, and for the next few days I plan to use concepts that Mooney brings up in her book to discuss various experiences and thoughts I have regarding women in social and career life.

“When the Professional gets Personal”

Have you ever encountered a coworker that revealed too much personal information to you too quickly? It’s not that you didn’t want to get to know this person, or even that you really minded knowing some of the juicy details of their life, but you didn’t realize how burdensome this information could be later on. Women often judge the depth of their relationships with other women through trust. In order to gain acceptance into a friend circle, women find that they have to open themselves up and reveal personal, and often intimate, details of themselves to others. In friendships, this may be ok --- but there is still a caveat regarding how quickly you want to reveal that type of information to anyone --- the workplace is not the place to do it. Aside from the obvious fact that today’s confidante could be tomorrow’s manager, personal details about your life floating around work could have other negative affects. Your coworkers may feel compelled to cover for you or may feel that your outside life is affecting the way you are at work. Depending on the severity of your issues and the details you share, you could be seen as someone difficult to work with, or not interested in her career.

While we all long to form those tightly knit bonds with other women, the workplace may not be the place to do it. Relationships, when good, can be wonderful, but when they dissolve, they can be terrible. There probably isn’t a girl out there who hasn’t shared personal information with someone (yes, even MBA Cutie has done it and lived to pay the consequences), in attempt to create intimacy, but then had the situation backfire. In a social setting, you may be able to distance yourself from the situation, but if you work in a niche industry or are a member of a particular business association, you may have to deal with the circumstances for the rest of your career.

2 Comments:

At 11:05 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Women are derivative of men, and therefore destined to be ruled by them. It says so in the bible.

 
At 11:05 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Women are derivative of men, and therefore destined to be ruled by them. It says so in the bible.

 

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