Success in the workplace: Drill-sergeant techniques for women
Monday, September 18, 2006

By ANDREA GURWITT
HERALD NEWS

During a particularly rocky time in Carrie Sawchuk's life, she found herself sobbing on the phone to her mother. She was at the Jersey Shore, sitting outside in the rain. She had no money. She didn't know what to do with her life.

"Why me?" she wailed to her mother.

"Why not you? What makes you so special?!" her mother shot back. "Get up off your ass and stop complaining."

Drill-sergeant talk from the maternal unit, but it did the trick.

It's not that her mother isn't the supportive type, but in this case she knew her daughter well enough to know which route to take.

After that conversation Sawchuk, who worked in the retail clothing business for many years, pulled herself together and last summer opened a vintage clothing, jewelry and handbag store in Montclair called My Inheritance.

"I'm tough. I've been through a lot of tough situations," says Sawchuk, of West Paterson. "I made a lot of mistakes. You learn from your mistakes."

This ability to forge ahead, to take responsibility for her situation and then think her way out of it, is exactly what two former Marine Corps officers advise in their recently published book, "Leading From the Front: No Excuse Leadership Tactics for Women."

"When we faced an obstacle, we learned to identify the problem, examine our actions, implement a new course, and get on with it. Excuses got us nowhere," the authors write of their time in the military.

Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch say their years in the Marines taught them self-esteem and confidence, which, in turn, allowed them to be good leaders.

Leadership, they say, is more than being appointed the head of a group. It means setting and keeping standards and doing the best at every job you undertake. Others -- co-workers, employees, family members -- will soon take notice and even emulate you.

"I learned how to influence outcomes and how to inspire others," Lynch says.

"I was one of the shyest people you would have ever met growing up. I just didn't like being the person to raise my hand and speak up," Morgan says. After her Marine Corps training, she says, "I really found my voice."

Susan McDonald, a junior-high-school friend of Sawchuk's and now one of her employees, says the women who work for Sawchuk are dedicated to the store and its success because of the way Sawchuk treats them.

"We really like selling the merchandise and I think that stems from the fact that she's not necessarily telling us what to do, she's including us in the process," says McDonald, of Clifton.

Lynch and Morgan say Marine Corps leadership principles for the workplace include:

Take on the tough assignments no one else wants to do.

Don't ignore problems. Instead, find the solution.

Take care of those around you but don't neglect your own needs.

Stay calm. Emotional outbursts hurt your reputation and are not productive.

Don't panic or freeze when a crisis arises. Search out someone who can help you deal with the problem. Leaders take action to improve a critical situation, the authors write.

Do not say "I'm sorry" unless you did something wrong. Overapologizing weakens a leader's reputation and damages her credibility.

About this last one, Marlene Waldock, a communications skills trainer and former host of a business show on News 12 New Jersey, adds to the "I'm sorry" ban self-deprecating lead-ins such as, "I know this isn't important to you, but ..." or, "I'm probably not the right person, but ..."

"Suddenly what you're about to say loses its steam, its value," Morgan says.

Waldock tells women, "You don't have to be sorry unless you've done something physically to hurt someone."

Women, Morgan and Lynch say, have a tendency to put off making decisions until they have fully investigated their options. This might be because they don't trust their instincts, or worry a decision will cause conflict in the office, they write. Often, uncertainty stems from believing a decision means making a right or wrong choice. But delay "often leads to more frustration and uncertainty than making the decision quickly," they write.

Sawchuk has no problem in that department.

"I'm very decisive, because if I'm going to make a mistake, what's the difference if I'm going to wait five minutes to think about it," she says. "That five minutes I'm going to sit there to mull over, it's not going to help anything."

Leaders make decisions using the information they have at hand, Lynch and Morgan say, and then move on to the next one. Marines are trained to aim for 80 percent of the information they need to make a choice.

Commonly, women are viewed as having less confidence than men in the workplace. That has been variously attributed to their fairly recent arrival in large numbers in the work world, their different way of interacting with a group and their having to fit into a male-structured hierarchy. But psychologist Jan Yoder, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio and a former researcher and teacher at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, sees the issue as not about self-confidence but about women's perceived legitimacy in the workplace.

"My problem with the confidence approach is the onus is on a woman herself. When I think of it as being legitimate, the onus falls on both," Yoder says.

As an example, she cites a lab study she did once in which female college students led groups of male students in "masculinized" tasks. The women in two of the three groups were given the answers beforehand. The third group was the control group.

One group of men was told its female leader had specialized training and knowledge of the task. The second group, led by a woman who also knew the answers, was not told anything about the leader. The first group did better. The second group did no better than the control group.

"It didn't matter how confident she was," Yoder says. "If she's not legitimized, not seen as knowing the task at hand, all the confidence in the world makes no difference."

Yoder advises women to look for a business organization or a network of women that can give advice and offer support. Lynch and Morgan suggest finding a mentor before a crisis arises so you have someone in place when you need help.

Being a leader does not mean changing your behavior to fit the way you think a leader should act, the book's authors say. Rather you should remain who you are, but figure out your strengths and weaknesses and then work to eliminate your weaknesses.

One of those weaknesses may be the pervasive need to be liked. The authors say women often tell them they want to be respected and liked, but most go about it in the wrong order. First liked, then respected.

"Don't get caught up in affirmation: Will they like me?" Lynch says. "If you're always trying to please and placate and be the one who's friendly and popular, you're hardly ever going to get respect."

"You can be nice," Morgan adds, "Just don't be walked over."

Reach Andrea Gurwitt at 973-569-7159 or gurwitt@northjersey.com.

Ellie