The Nice Niche–A Trap or an Opportunity?
by Sima Matthes (New York City)
There seems to be at once an unwritten expectation that women will be “nicer” (whatever your definition of that word is) than men, and that if they’re not, they’re considered impossible to work with. What does it mean for women to be condemned (or elevated) to the “nice niche”– the place where women in corporate America often find themselves stuck?
Michelle Bersell, psychotherapist and life coach calls it the “Good Girl Syndrome.” She says “it’s more subtle than just being a doormat or people pleaser, because a person can be successful in one area of life and struggle in another area, especially their careers.”
Roxanne Rivera, now the CEO of Syntactics Communication Skills, has had decades of experience working in the male-dominated construction industry. In her experience working with scientists at Los Alamos and other labs near her home in New Mexico, as well as in interviews conducted for her upcoming book There’s No Crying in Construction, she has observed that women tend to like consensus and involving people as a team. “Women understand how important it is to be able to communicate; women leaders are more open to a consensus type leadership, and understand those communication needs,” says Ms. Rivera. “The key to this type of leadership,” she says, “is understanding that consensus doesn’t mean that you ask for permission or that every opinion changes your decision. You can speak nicely without sacrificing your authority.”
She was able to get out of the “nice niche” by learning how best to work with her mostly male colleagues and clients. “One thing that helped me in dealing with men was studying men and how they communicate. They say what they mean–they don’t try to sugar coat it. [I learned that] I needed to speak clearly, say what I want, without beating around the bush. It got me over the “nice niche.” She continued, “Men may explode and get angry, but they forget about it and move on. Women tend to remember things for years. I love women, and have close female friends, but in terms of work, once you’ve worked with men as long as I have, you tend to prefer working with men because of the directness.”
There’s a tendency,” she said, “for women to be apologists, to use language that indicates a need for approval. We as a group tend to “tag” our questions–asking ‘How do you feel about that?’ or ‘What do you think?’–or ‘disclaiming’ our input by saying “I may be wrong, but I think this is the way we should do it.'”
There’s also the “expectation that women are going to be fair, which tends to be a hot button men push, especially in meetings where the majority of staff is male.” “The other thing that really hurts women, especially in meetings,” Rivera said, “is that men tend to do most of the talking. Women tend to stay quieter; men are holding court, doing the hierarchy thing. Men tend to put more stock in who they are–their ego, their masculinity–because of their jobs.”
Ms. Bersell agrees: “The Good Girl Syndrome is interesting because it is what women in particular fall back to when they do not know their value. Through knowing their intrinsic value, they will not have to turn to the external for approval. When they are able to do that they are able to be pleasant while also having appropriate boundaries because they are not concerned about others’ feelings regarding them. This comes from a sense of certainty about oneself.”
Rivera echoed that sentiment: “Women are actually MORE self confident than men because we multitask, we get satisfaction from things other than work. We give up our authority in meetings because we don’t want to seem pushy.”
She suggested that women try the following exercise, which she used to do with friends and colleagues. “Pick 5 friends or acquaintances to call, and ask them: Give me three words that come to your mind when I walk into a room,” she said, “[When I asked about me] they said things like intelligent, in control, authoritative, attractive. I thought wow, is that how I come across when I walk into a room? I’m a heck of a lot more than I think I am.” Rivera says that this helped her get to the place where she took herself as seriously as other people did.
Ms. Rivera says, “Women can survive, thrive, be happy, stand up for themselves [in a nice way] but be taken seriously. Women feel like there’s a fine line between nice or witch. There’s a way to be nice and still stand up for yourself: have the confidence to know that you deserve to be heard.”
