Ambitchous by Debra Condren.
For a paper in my introductory business class freshman year, I chose to read a book entitled amBITCHous by Debra Condren. It changed my perspective on the interactions in the business world—- especially as a woman. Here is my response to the guidelines and prompt the professor assigned:
As a business psychologist, executive coach, career advisor and founder and president of both Manhattan Business Coaching and the Women’s Business Alliance, Dreden offers success tips for women at any stage of their professional careers. amBITCHous addresses several important business essentials including how to:
- increase women’s business acumen by teaching strategies for identifying meaningful, challenging work; increase profitability; build and keep wealth; compete with power and traditional and male-dominated corporate sectors; establish themselves as experts; and tap into their competitive advantage while still being professional.
- how to handle business life in the office, how to handle business in your personal life and how to be happy while being victorious in your field.
Condren begins the first of her lessons with her own discoveries of success. She accounts her success to good-mentoring, proper and thorough research, risk taking and learning from her own mistakes and the mistakes of others. Her strong business tactics and keen balancing skills promote that “a woman can act with integrity and treat others like a human being, but feel just fine about the fact that not everyone is going to like her when she stands up to those who would steal her thunder”. In addition to her success tips, Condren emphasizes the need to distinguish between valuing success and valuing ambition and acknowledge ambition as a positive annotation rather than a negative one. She questions:
“Why does that word [ambition] drive women so crazy? You’d think it means admitting we’ve gotten genital warts” . Condren discovered that women “don’t simply prefer the word successful to ambitious. They don’t mind being regarded as successful, but they’re afraid of being called ambitious”. I learned that in order “to be successful, all you have to do is accomplish the kind of things you’re supposed to do at work. Whereas when you are ambitious, you’re being a bit more extraordinary”
amBITCHous describes numerous scenarios in the corporate world that women encounter. Condren instructs leadership and authority are obtained by utilizing both company benefits, performance reviews and through proper communication with co-workers.
To utilize company benefits, find out early on all development opportunities made available to employees. Condren gives Lisa Taylor as an example because she took advantage of an educational program when she first started her job at twenty-two and by twenty-five she had received her Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Condren illustrates the importance of proper communication in a corporate setting through stories of business meetings and team projects.
In terms of verbal communication, Condren targets how to deal with a rude person mumbling comments during a presentation or meeting by addressing the person’s remark with “a direct, clear-eyed gaze tinged with a slightly amused, condescending edge”, followed by a calm “Okay, moving on to our next point. We’re making great progress!” to the rest of the group.
To avoid credibility dilemmas in a team project, it is best to be the secretary of the group and take it upon yourself to have explicit written agreements that specify individuals responsibilities; as a result everyone is given the credit they deserve. In terms of a calm corporate culture, Condren suggests being the person to orchestrate celebrating achievements by throwing a dinner party or planning a special lunch—because who doesn’t like being in a happy environment when working?
The book portrays Maslow’s theories when Condren recommends other communication benefits:being “the newspaper for your company” by sending out FYI emails containing the latest news in your industry (social), negotiating a rightful earning (financial safety), and asking “what’s in it for me?” (self-actualization). Condren encourages upholding Maslow’s theory of safety in the sense of finances, by “doing salary researching using sources like Hoover’s and LexisNexis” and that satisfaction of financial safety gives you the “a lifetime of options” allowing you to have economic empowerment to buy time when you need it. Condren shares the stories women who changed careers late in life to go back to school or who dropped one business to become an entrepreneur of another and were able to do so because of the financial muscle they gained beforehand. In addition to securing financial success from a career, Condren encourages purchasing property as a single woman to increase profits (vs. doing it as a married woman) and to have another source of financial stability.
In addition to avoiding confrontation, amBITCHous shows that proper communication allows for co-workers to give frank feedback which keeps an individual humble, gives room for improvement and scores respect. When the feedback is positive, it can then be used as a tool when it comes to performance reviews. Performance reviews are a passage for establishing credibility as an employee, an opportunity to inform the employer of the positive feedback received from co-workers and an opportunity to negotiate a rightful earring.
Besides the financial and social aspects of business life, amBITCHous focuses on how to tackle challenges with business on a personal level. In taking preparations of financial stability, a businesswoman allows herself to safely mangage her personal life. For example, Condren provides a story from a Harvard neurology professor who is a single mother:
“I make enough money for good day care and after-school care so that I can work at a career I love. I get a lot of help from friends and family. I desperately wanted to have my children and I worked very hard to have them. I value my ambition and my children, and I want to work and I want the best for my children.”
Earning a rightful salary is essential to peace of mind about the quality of care and education a woman’s children receive while she minds her ambition.
Another aspect of business and personal mixing is the blurred line of networking while in personal settings. For example, Renee a thirty-seven year old vice president of an executive search firm describes how strangers at parties would often run to their cars and grab their resumes for her to review and before Renee learned how to set limits with people who hit her up for professional advice when she was off the clock, she paid the price. Condren addresses both sides of the problem:
Women have trouble simply saying no and that can be a problem, because there are always encounters with people who are willing to take advantage of your weakness. People who want to take you out and pick your brain are what I call Step Skippers—they want a free pass to your advice. Learn to say no to skip steppers. A more proper approach to networking while in a personal setting, is to ask to “set up an appointment” and a more proper response to a skip stepper who ask’s “ I’d love to take you to lunch and pick your brain” is to reply with “I don’t do lunch. But you can call and set up an appointment with my assistant”
Once networks have been established, Condren illustrates how to select a group of mentors that will provide you with proper advice but also a lot of experience and mistakes that a woman can learn from. She reminds women not to be reluctant to ask and even pay for help or guidance. amBITCHous advises to create a group of mentors (paid and unpaid) that cover many professional areas such as “management, business plan development, public relations advice, long term strategic career planning, marketing, finance, budgeting, accounting, sales and legal advice”. These people should be frank, hard hitting advisors who a woman might even be nervous asking to be a mentor including a famous high-profile professional or complete stranger. After mentors have been established, Condren reminds women to uphold the esteem needs (of Maslow) and not dismiss mentors’ advice saying things like “Yes, but…” or “That would never work” because in order to keep a productive mentoring relationship a woman must be appreciative of the advice being given from her expert.
amBITCHous reminds women that ambition is a positive characteristic one should embrace and encourages women to cultivate the contribution they were born to make, regardless of what society may label them for their success. Condren points out that although “men are taught to apologize for weakness, and women for strengths” they should embrace those strengths and not apologize for their weakness but their view failures as a learning experiences. Condren promotes that with proper professional equitette and sharp minds women can be happy with their personal life and maintain an ambitious career. amBITCHous illustrates that each ambitchous woman has within her unique contributions to make. No matter where a woman may find herself in her career, she has to stay on track; she does the ambitchous work that she loves and works where she gets her increasing power, recognition, and money and that will fuel her determination to pursue meaningful and challenging work.
(Source: Ambitchous- Debra Condren. All page numbers have been removed for clarity. I paraphrased and quoted the book directly.)
