Expand your opportunities by finding a specialty

, , , ,

I spent two hours this week writing an article about autism. My son was diagnosed with autism and I could write five hundred pages about dealing with the diagnosis. But then I reminded myself about specializing. About focus. Specialists get a lot of good things in this world, and people who dabble in everything get nothing.

Dabbling is fine, to a point. I mean, you have to dabble to figure out what you want to be a specialist in. But let’s be real. I write a career column. I have a book about careers coming out. I speak at universities about careers. I am not an autism writer.

So I trashed the autism article. Because it’s not going to help my career in a focused way. Sure, it might help in a haphazard way, the way playing basketball at the park helps your career because you never know what will come of anything. But the only way to reach focused career goals is to have focused efforts.

I stick to writing about careers because specialization is the ticket to freedom from boring and inflexible work. Let’s say you want to have every other Wednesday off to go to a yoga class. If you are a specialist who would be hard to replace, your boss will be more likely to say yes than if five hundred entry-level people can do what you do.

The more you need, the more this rule applies. Moving in and out of the workforce is easier once you’ve established that you’re great at a specific thing. And entrepreneurship is easier as specialist, too, because one of best ways to gauge aptitude is if that person has a strong knowledge base and network in the field of the proposed business.

You don’t have to specialize right away, but you should see your work path as a quest for specialization. View random corporate jobs as possible apprenticeships. You don't need to know what you’ll specialize in, but you need to be open to it when it comes. Specialization often creeps up on you, like a friend who you never expected to turn out to be a friend.

When I first started writing columns, I had no idea that I would write about careers. I was hired to “write about what it’s like to be a female executive.” I tried lots of different types of columns. I wrote about software development (my specialty at the time). I wrote about consumer products (definitely not my specialty). Those columns flopped, and so did most of my columns that were not, in some way, about careers. I learned by trial and error that I was a career writer.

It is always scary to specialize because there are so many jobs that become out of your focus. But there is good research to show that you will have an easier time staying employed if you specialize.

Specialization is also scary because we think we need to address all aspects of our personality with our work. But no work can do that. Autism, for example, is important to me right now, but it doesn’t need to be important in my work. In fact, work is sometimes a nice break from that aspect of my life.

My son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a type of autism that occurs when someone has a very high IQ but a large deficit in social skills. His teachers taught him a way to leverage his specialty — memorizing — to learn rules for socializing that other people know intuitively.

I learned many lessons from watching him do that. One is that once you have a specialty, you can leverage it to add things that are not necessarily your specialty, but you still want to have them in your life. In that way, a specialized path is one of the most diverse and rewarding paths you can choose.

/10 Comments

My adventures in shared-care parenting

,

My husband and I both want to be home with our kids while they are young, and we downsized our standard of living enormously to do that.

I made a career change from software company executive to writer. This has been great for me. It’s a career that can grow big, but there is lots of flexibility for working around my personal life.

My husband ended his entertainment industry career and downshifted, slowly, first to the nonprofit world, which we found surprisingly inflexible for parenting, then to stay-at-home dad.

You know how you hear about the dads in the 50s who folded under the pressure of having to support a family with no financial help from a partner? I am sorry to say that I felt like that — especially living in New York City.

But, like most people who want jobs with flexible hours, my husband was not able to find one. And a standard job would mean leaving at 8 a.m. and getting home at 7 p.m. which are pretty much the hours our kids are awake. So, he had to choose between working nights or not seeing the kids. He chose working nights.

There are not a lot of options for working nights. Especially if you don’t have the talents to work at a nightclub. So my husband is answering phones at a car service. He takes down the time the person wants the car and some other information and a computerized system dispatches the car. My husband does the same thing, over and over again, for eight hours a day.

To give you a sense of his co-workers, the woman next to him slammed down the phone the other day and said, “The customers are so outrageous! This guy wants a car in a quarter hour. How am I supposed to know what a quarter hour is?”

In between calls, his coworkers play brand-name Internet-based games that my husband produced in his former career. He doesn’t tell anyone. He tries to fly under the radar.

But the customers, investment bankers at the most chic-chic firms in the city, notice something is different about my husband. Two or three times a week, someone will say to him over the phone, “What are you doing at this place?” One guy said, “Is this your real job?” My husband said yes and the guy pushed until my husband explained our situation. The guy said, “That would have never happened when I was your age. Men couldn’t do that.”

The hardest part about this life is that very few people understand what we’re doing. You can imagine what a conversation killer it is when someone asks my husband the great American question: “So, what do you do?”

Although I overheard one woman say to him, “Your kids are so lucky,” the best support system I’ve found is learning from other people who are thinking seriously about this topic.

I particularly liked The Bullshit Observer’s rant this week about how difficult it is to manage career aspirations and be a hands-on parent. He has some interesting statistics as well as insights like this one:

“American parents have two very fundamental responsibilities at war with each other every single day. Those who’ve chosen the path that goes up the ladder appear to have chosen not to be parents. Those who’ve chosen the path that leads to the diaper bin have chosen not to move up.”

One organization that publishes a lot of information on changing the situation is the Third Path. This organization helps couples move beyond the idea that one parent is the primary caretaker and toward a mindset of “shared care”.

Third Path offers mentoring to couples who are trying to implement a shared care arrangement in their home. Though this path is not easy for anyone, the stories of what people have gone through to make shared care work are inspiring.

/7 Comments

Interview mistakes you shouldn’t make

, , , ,

I interviewed for a job. I haven't interviewed for the last three years. Since my first son was born. I felt that awkward feeling that people describe when they break up with their long-term significant other and have to date again.

It was a writing job. Most writing jobs don't require an interview. You just send some writing and if they like it, you get the job. But this was a big writing job, so I had to interview. However no one seemed to care what I was like in person since they'd probably never have to see me. So everything was riding on a phone interview.

I tried to do all the things you're supposed to do. I dressed in business clothes because you sound different when you are in your pajamas and when you're in a suit. Even on the phone. I stood up while I talked to sound energetic. I smiled because I read that a smile changes your voice to sound upbeat.

I thought things were going well. I liked the interviewer and all the questions were easy. When I got off the phone, I started think about my greatness: Name in lights, bank account brimming.

By bedtime, I was a wreck. I thought of questions I answered poorly. For example, “Where do you want to be in ten years? Would you go back to executive management?” The obvious answer should have been, “No. I want to write forever.” I didn't say the obvious. I decided to discuss the fact that my income as a writer is about twenty percent of my former, executive income. And, like that wasn't enough, I started talking about my childcare arrangements.

For those of you who struggle with similar problems, do not talk about them in an interview. Such talk makes you look confused, on the fence, overwhelmed by kids. All of which were true for me. But I could have hidden my problems for a twenty-minute interview. I hadn't rehearsed. I talked off the top of my head. And such an easy question to blow.

Later that night, when I was lying in bed, my heart was racing. I told myself to stop thinking about the job. I told myself, There is nothing you can do now, and There will be more jobs. But that thinking never works when you interview for a great job. It never seems like there are more jobs.

So then I did something I learned in sixth grade. I made a list of things I did well. In sixth grade it was why I would make the basketball team next season. But this time it was why I will get a great job next time. I made my list. I put it on the fridge. I felt good.

Then my husband saw this list. He said, “Did you say this stuff to the interviewer?”
Then I felt bad about the interview again.

So what could I have done? There are no re-dos in interviews. But we can all learn from my mistakes:
1. Rehearse. Very few questions are unpredictable. There are plenty of books to buy that give you the questions and answers to memorize. Try, for starters, The Complete Q&A Job Interview Book, by Jeffrey Allen.
2. Make a list of off-limits topics so you don't go there. An interviewer can lead you to a topic, but your answer can lead somewhere else. Have a plan in place to make this happen.
3. Make a list of reasons you are great. Use it in the interview.

But guess what? I got the job. So here's another lesson: Get some perspective. It was very normal for me to not be sure what I want to do career-wise when I have two kids under four years old. I need to know what I want to do now, or how can I do it? But I don't need to know where I want to be in ten years. And I am thinking it might be an irrelevant question for today's workers, because in ten years most of us will be doing something completely different than what we're interviewing for, so why talk about it?

/6 Comments

You need an entourage

, , , ,

Anyone who owns a small business knows that if you don't reinvest in the business, the business dies. So why do so many people fail to reinvest in themselves? Even if you work for someone else, you are running a small business: The business of you. You provide a product and you have to market it and make it better and better so you earn more and more money.

If you put all your money into savings, you are like a business with a lot of cash on hand but only small potential for growth. If you spend all your money on fun and toys you're like a business run by executives who throw lavish parties they can't afford and drive the business into the ground. Your aim should be to save a little (for security's sake) splurge a little (for sanity's sake) and reinvest most of your money back into your business: You.

You the careerist that is. Here's what the business of you needs in order to expand: Headcount. Here's what you need in ascending order, depending on how much money you have.

Childcare — pay the highest rate in your neighborhood
The first thing you need to grow a career is to clear your head so you can think. If you have to worry about childcare, if you have to argue with your spouse during the workday about who is picking up the kid, you are spending time in ways that don't grow your business. Pay enough money for a caregiver who can do the job without you micromanaging.

Personal Assistant – $10 an hour
Take a look at your to do list. Think about how long each task will take, and whether or not a person can do it for $10 an hour. Your time is worth more than $10 an hour. So why are you doing tasks that you can pay $10 to have done? Don't tell me you need to do everything. If it's not integral to your life plan, you don't need to be doing it. Examples: Shopping, dry cleaning pickup, waiting for a plumber.

A therapist – $125 per session, but try to get your insurance company to pay
I'm a big fan of therapy. The more you know about yourself the more likely you are to make good choices for your career. Also, the problems you have outside the office usually pop up inside the office also. So go to a therapist to deal with non-work problems and your work life will improve.

Speaking coach – $300 per session
Charisma can make up for a lot of shortfalls, and good speaking skills gives you more charisma. You probably think you're charismatic already, but there's always room for improvement. People believe that a charismatic person is better to work with than a non-charismatic person. You'll also learn to speak in a way that makes people trust you and believe in your judgment. Scary, but true: This is teachable.

Publicist — $1000 month
Most people who are quoted by the press actually have publicists. For a CEOs publicists are a packaged deal with the job: A PR department. For other executives, and even up-and-coming managers, a publicist is someone you hire. Your name will get into the world and you will have an easeier time getting a new job, easier time making sales, and more justifcation for asking for higher wages. I know, you're thinking, how crass. But it's the way the world works. If you want to be noticed in your field, hire a publicist.

I bet you're saying, “Penelope is out of her mind. This is so much money.” But if you reinvest 20% of your cash back into your career, which is, in fact, very low as small businesses go, then this list starts looking reasonable. I have hired each of these people at some point in my career, and the return on investment for each easily exceeded cash output. Really.

/5 Comments

Status symbols for a new generation

, , , ,

Hey all you women! Looking for a way to look good at a party? Forget bragging rights to house with a picket fence. Forget a plastic-surgeried body that defies gravity. Here are the status symbols for a new generation:

1. A flexible job. This is practically a pre-requisite for being able to successfully balance work and personal life. Ironically, most of these jobs come from years of conniving and strategizing under the guise of being a power-mongering ladder climber. After all, most companies do not capitulate to flexibility until they have fallen in love with you for your performance and ambition.

2. An awesome nanny. Everyone brags about their nanny because if you don't think your nanny is great then how can you leave her with your kids?

But most nannies are not that great. Here is what a status-symbol nanny looks like: She never calls in sick, she can plan and execute a dinner without your input, she doesn't berate you when your kid has a cut from falling off the bed under your care. And longevity counts — if you can keep a nanny for more than two years, the implication is that you are a great manager.

3. A competent husband. Household competence, that is. Delegate everything you can to your assistant. But there are some things that would be heartless to delegate, like choosing a birthday present for your nine-year-old son. This is where a husband comes in. What if your husband knows so much about your kids that he remembers the birthday and decides what to buy, but also makes time to forage for it in the stores? That is real competence.

When it comes to a status symbol husband, you do not delegate to him so much as confer, and you make a similar amount of time in your lives for taking care of your home life. If you find this kind of husband, women will drool over him as if he were the captain of the high school football team.

4. A caffeine-free life. Sure, a lot of women do this during pregnancy, but as soon as the baby pops out, the caffeine ramps up. I don't know any non-pregnant woman who works in business and has kids and abstains from caffeine. Except for Sallie Krawheck, chief financial officer of Citigroup. I don't know how she does it, but she seems so stable and organized to live without caffeine.

I tell this to myself every night at 9pm, which is when I have to get ready for bed in order to get eight hours of sleep and wake up with my son at 5:30 am. But there's always one more very important thing that I haven't done. Sallie must do her very important things first thing every day. Which is what we all should do.

5. A reputation for helping. The standards for women have changed. The status symbols have changed. But all that talk of women “playing like men” is nonsense to me. Women have been helping each other forever, and now is no exception. The women we look up to are those who have a track record for figuring out how to leverage their power and resources to help other women. Give advice freely, mentor someone, share your experience at the glass ceiling so another woman can go higher. A fulfilling career requires that you give as well as receive.

There's a good reason that women brag about the stuff on this list: It's the stuff that really does impact one's happiness. This is a list of things that will improve your life more than a raise or a top-tier vacation. These are things that will pave the way for you to have fun during the day and rest well at night.

Managing during labor

, , , , ,

I had my baby last week. I'm tired. But not too tired to recognize management issues during labor. There were three management styles among the people who were in the delivery room:

1. The micromanager
That was me, ordering my husband around, even when the contractions were so strong that I couldn't stand up. I'm sure he wanted to tell me to shut up, but no sane man snaps at his wife when she's in labor.

One of the more harsh insurance company rules is that when you are in labor you have to call to get permission to go to the hospital. So my husband started dialing the phone. I said, “You are not going to be on the phone when I'm having the baby. Put down the phone.”

My husband said we wouldn't be covered and we would have the most expensive baby in New York City.

But no one at the insurance company was answering the phone, so I started troubleshooting: “Dial zero. Say you’re a doctor.”

My husband said, “I think I can handle calling the insurance company. You just worry about the baby.”

At some point I stopped harassing my husband, but not by choice, only because the contractions were too strong.

2. The coach
About half way through labor I asked for an epidural. At that point, I was in severe pain. For those of you who have not had an epidural, it is a totally magic infusion of drugs that numbs the body from the insane pain of pregnancy without knocking you out. The epidural is not small peanuts. It’s a shot into the spine. I had to sit very still, while coping with sharp pains, and I had to sign a form that acknowledged the risk of death.

Meanwhile, I was at a teaching hospital, so the attending physician (read: real doctor) was coaching the resident (read: still-learning-to-be-a-doctor doctor). Behind my back, literally, I heard the attending using the Socratic method: “How much are you going to use?” and “Why would you go up there when you already found a spot down here?” This coaching is not what you want to hear when it’s your spine, but I see how it’s preferable to say, me screaming at my husband about how to navigate a phone tree. And, frankly, the attending did a fine job because the pain ended.

3. The trusting, encouraging manager
When its time to actually push the baby out, the doctor finally comes in, ready to go. The doctor and nurse together were watching what looked to be about six machines simultaneously. And they were watching me, and the baby, whose head was visible by now. The doctor was definitely in charge, but she almost never gave orders. There was a clear and strong trust between the doctor and nurse that each person knew what the other was doing and that they were each doing a fine job. There was a calmness and efficiency that I wish I had throughout my life.

Which is what made me think, initially, about management. When I saw the doctor and nurse trusting each other, I trusted them. I didn’t trust the resident, but the attending was so respectful of the resident that I trusted that the attending would guide the resident to a good job.

And then there was me, micromanaging. In hindsight I see that managing someone so closely that they want to strangle you is in fact sign of weakness; because either you are meddling where you needn’t, or you are surrounded by incompetence. In either case, it’s a statement about yourself. Competent people are not surrounded by incompetence. Rather, incompetence attracts incompetence.

I think about that and I think of course my husband can function without me meddling. He is smart and capable. And this is how we should feel about people we work with, too. Or we should wonder why we are attracting incompetence. There is never one crazy person in a marriage and there’s never one crazy worker.

My excuse was that I was in labor. But you probably don’t have such a good excuse. So if you don’t trust the people you work with, ask yourself why. You need to either trust them to do their job, or trust them to improve with respectful coaching. If you can’t do either then adjust their job so that they will succeed. Or else you will not succeed.

Sidenote: It was a boy. We are thrilled.

How to job hunt when you’re pregnant

, , , ,

I am pregnant. Due on June 21.

The last time I had a baby was not a great moment in the history of gender discrimination in America. For one thing, as soon as I announced I was pregnant, my editor at a business magazine fired me and recommended that I “try writing for women's magazines.”

I also got laid off from my corporate job right before I got pregnant, so I found myself job hunting when I was five months along. No one mentioned the pregnancy in the interviews, (after all, it would be illegal,) but I gave new meaning to “the elephant in the room.” And why, really, would anyone hire a pregnant woman when there surely are other qualified people who would not take maternity leave?

What I learned from that pregnancy was that there is no good time in one's career to get pregnant because there are so many things you cannot control.

But there are some things you can control, and this pregnancy I have tried to do better planning. For one thing, I have set up my life so that I can work at my home while I eat ice cream, and wear maternity pants that look like pajamas. And I thought I was a genius during my book auction when I went from publisher to publisher hiding a three-month pregnancy under a very-hip poncho, selling myself as an author who could get the book written quickly: “By June 1st” I'd say. And the publishers always said, “Great.” No one said, “Why? Are you pregnant?”

I finally told my agent about the pregnancy right before I accepted the winning bid. “I want to make sure I'm not doing anything dishonest by hiding the pregnancy,” I told her.

Before I tell you what my agent said, let me just say that I would never advise anyone to tell a perspective employer about a pregnancy. You are under no legal obligation to disclose this information. And it can only hurt you, so employers are insane to think anyone would disclose until negotiations are done.

That said, more than one woman has written to me that she feels guilty hiding the information. And I have to admit that I had that guilt, too.

But my agent said, “By all means, don't tell anyone yet!” She said, “Congratulations!” and “You have a right to get pregnant and work too!” I loved my agent as much for her reaction to my pregnancy as I did for her selling my book.

Then reality set in. A TV agent wants to represent me, but he can't work with me until I'm not pregnant. He doesn't want to tell me this himself, so my agent tells me.
“In July?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “When you lose the weight.”

I've gained 40 pounds and I'm not even done. And yes, it's my own fault. I admit it. I have not counted a calorie since the second month. But here's my point. Pregnancy is always a problem in a career, no matter where you are, no matter how much you plan.

The best thing I did this time, though, was to get myself into a situation where I would not be fired for being pregnant (yes, it's illegal, but it happens all the time). I also set up my life so that I can take things as slowly as I want to after the pregnancy. (The cost, of course, is that my family is taking a huge financial hit. But at least we have our sanity.)

For those of you who are trying to plan, flexibility is important. The more flexibility you have the better. But it's the kind of thing you have to build into a career way before the day you conceive. Essentially, I have been planning my current pregnancy ever since I got pregnant the first time, three years ago, and saw that starting a plan in the first month is about two years too late.

Pregnancy planning for careerists should begin before you even have a partner, let alone conceive. But most of the women who contact me about pregnancy planning are already pregnant. And to you, I say, the worst thing I ever did was think I could job hunt while I was showing, and the best thing I ever did was buy a poncho.

/4 Comments

In search of the stay-at-home spouse

, , ,

I am on a campaign to make my husband a stay-at-home parent. I am convinced that this is a precondition for me having a huge career, but also, it's a precondition for the sanity of our family.

After a generation of two-income families, there is little anecdotal evidence to show that a family can survive with two spouses in high-powered, time demanding careers with children at home. Invariably, one spouse takes a slower career path in order to support the children and high-powered spouse in their endeavors.

Before I launch into the intricacies of my own family, here are some facts that will affect your family, too:

1. There is no equality in taking care of kids. Even if there is a full-time nanny, one parent feels the majority of the burden on sick days, parent-teacher conferences, Halloween and soccer games.

2. Among highly educated women with children, 43 percent have left the workforce voluntarily during their first eight years.

3. Most women at the very top of the corporate ladder are not the primary caretakers of children. The women either have no children or have a husband taking care of the kids.

4. Women who are parents are held to significantly higher standards at work than women and men who are childless and men who are parents.

5. Women and men have parity in pay until they have children. Then women who are parents earn less money for doing the same job that men who are parents do.

So look, I don't mean to be a buzz-kill on the feminist revolution, but more like a reality check: If you want kids, don't marry a lawyer who is going to work 16-hour days if you want to work 16 hours a day, too.

Lately, I have been experiencing these statistics first hand. I am the primary caretaker of our son, I handle all household things ranging from moving the 401K to buying nieces birthday presents, and on top of that, I earn as much as my husband does. When I tell him I'm doing too much, he says, “You're right. So stop doing so much.” And he proceeds to tell me why things that I see as essential — like getting a set of keys to the babysitter — do not need to be done.

So when my husband's job ended, I told him I didn't want him to get another office job. He was shocked. I explained to him, over about ten hours of heated discussion, that I couldn't keep doing everything without help from him at home. I tried to put it in terms he'd understand: Our bedroom heater had been off for more than half the winter because no one could stay home for a whole day to accommodate the parade of specialists who needed to come to our apartment to fix it.

Then I put it in harsher terms: I have very high earning power and which I cannot realize if he does not stay home to facilitate it. “You do not have high earning power,” I told him, as gently as I could, which surely was not. I spewed statistics to him, and I told him my conclusion that one person needs to be on the not-fast-track and I don't want it to be me.

So, okay, he's agreed, on some level, to give up the idea of a full-time job outside the home. It should be a victory for me, but it does not feel that way. My husband has the same problem that all people who stay home have: It's often boring, and always much harder than going to an office. And there are few rewarding job opportunities for people whose first job is to maintain a home.

Additionally, I have spoken to a few women who have a stay-at-home husband they say it is hell for the men socially. This news should not come as a surprise because most high-powered women who have men at home taking care of their kids will not talk about it on record in order to protect their husband's ego.

In fact, we have already experienced the social problems. When we tell people my husband is going to stay home, people say, “And do what? He can't just stay home.”

On the other hand, when I tell people that my husband has decided to stay home and I'll be the one working, people raise their eyebrows, and they talk to me differently. They take me more seriously. It shouldn't be that way, but since it is, I'm glad I found a husband who is willing to try staying home. I can't tell you that he's going to be happy. But I'm happy that we're giving it a try.

/5 Comments

Where women stand: An analysis of The Apprentice

, ,

I have never seen such an honest, unabashed portrait of the difficulties women face in corporate America as I have seen in The Apprentice.

Unabashed truth #1: Men hire people who are like them.
It's the men who set the tone for corporate life, the same men who win The Apprentice. For those of you who do not watch the show, the final episode was between Kelly (white male, 37) and Jennifer (white female, 31). It didn't matter that the general consensus was that Jennifer has more passion than Kelly. It didn't matter that Jennifer delivered comparable results to Kelly in a world that is dominated by men and not women.

The only thing that mattered, in the end, was that Kelly was “proven” and “steady”. These are euphemisms for male. Proven, in this instance, means that people can count on him to act like a man. And “steady” in this context means that men are not as passionate as women and thank goodness because men are not used to dealing with that kind of passion except when they want to get laid.

Unabashed truth #2: Women must use sex well, but not too well.
Carolyn, Donald Trump's sidekick, is a hot blond who wears sleeveless shirts that reveal taut arms but never stray far from Brooks Brothers styling. Carolyn kisses Trump (on both cheeks) in situations in which Trumps second sidekick, George (older man) walks away without so much as a pat on the back. But Carolyn is presented on the show as someone powerful. It's a balancing act. If Carolyn were ugly, this setup would not work. If she were as old as George, then Trump would not look as good sitting between the two of them.

Carolyn is careful to condemn female contestants for using sex as a way to get ahead. She has to say that. Balance is everything for women right now. You need to be totally hot and totally oblivious to it.

Unabashed truth #3: Children impact women's careers more than men's.
A recent Congressional study found that professional men and women make the same amount of money for doing the same jobs until the men and women have kids. Then the women's' salaries fall behind. Likely explanations: Women take on the brunt of the household/childrearing duties even in homes where the spouses were equal earners before kids; women take less responsibility at work because they're overwhelmed by the balancing act; men do not cut back because the more money they make the more they are likely to have a wife (and probably a nanny, a maid, etc) at home enabling them.

The Apprentice is a realistic depiction of this problem. Women with kids are not likely to audition for fifteen weeks of living in an absurd, dorm-like arrangement without their kids. It is no surprise that in the most recent episode, the only Apprentices who had kids were men.

Unabashed truth #4: Most powerful women with kids have a husband taking care of them.
Every so often a business publication will feature an article about how women get to the top, or the ten most powerful women, or women who broke through the glass ceiling. In each article, women who refuse to be identified by name cite the fact that their husband takes care of their home and kids as crucial to her ability to succeed at the office.

Carolyn is no exception. She is the most powerful woman on The Apprentice, and her husband is the primary caretaker for her two kids.

So if you want to get an accurate sense of how far women have come in corporate life, take a look at The Apprentice. And don't be shocked that men keep winning. If you want to make a difference in your career, I would not advise acting like a man (not believable) or getting plastic surgery (you don't need to be THAT hot). But I would advise that whether you're male or female, make sure you have a spouse who is willing to take care of home duties while you build a powerhouse career.

/5 Comments

3 things to teach your kids so they succeed in life

, , ,

The kid competition starts early, with sleep. For the first six months of my son's life, someone would ask me every day, “How's his sleeping?” As if sleep practices are a window into a baby's genius. (And let me tell you something, if sleep is the SATs for babies, I am living with the village idiot.)

Then there are parents who say, “My son adores his books!” like he is the next Shakespeare. And there are the parents who say, “I bought puzzles for her age group but they were too easy for her!” Two words: Who cares?

I am not hoping for an early reader or a math genius. I am looking for my kid to be able to navigate adult life in a way that makes him happy. And since I do not have a trust fund to bequeath, my son will have to find happiness in a career. As a career columnist, I am pretty certain that there are things way more important than sleeping through the night:

1.Take risks
Many people write to me to say they want to change careers and they are too scared. It doesn't matter how gifted these people are: they are stuck because they can't take risks.

Parents are not natural teachers of risk because a parent is all about creating a stable home and keeping the kid from danger. (We have a joke in my family that if my mom is giving someone advice, it must be to do whatever has less risk.)

But if a kid is scared to take risks the kid will get into ruts. The kid will not see possibilities. Adults who take risks understand that failing is okay. Kids need to get practice failing.

2. Be passionate
Many adults cannot figure out what to do with themselves. They have never learned to look inside themselves. They have never developed their own, internal gauges. If you want your kid to figure out what career to go to when she's twenty-five, help her learn to figure out what she's passionate about when she's much younger.

School does not teach passion. In school, a teacher tells kids what to investigate. Whether the kid is a genius or just an average student, school is not teaching him to follow his own passions. (In fact, you could argue that at the end of eighteen years of school, the kid with straight A's had less time than the average student to figure out her own passions; those perfect students are too busy learning what they are supposed to learn.)

There will come a point for your kid when his world is not made of Scantron tests — but of wide-open, connected fields for the kid's dreams. The kid needs a working, internal compass to move in this world.

3. Work hard to attain goals
Gifted kids don't need to work hard to get A's. Pray that you have a normal kid so that schoolwork can be a lesson on working hard. For kids who can do things easily, teach a kid to work hard at something else.

Remember, though, that hard work is not an end in itself. I know too many people who worked hard in school, went on to Ivy League, and now have no idea what to do with themselves.

Hard work only matters in the context of passion and risk taking. Otherwise, you can only work hard at someone else's dreams. So lets all raise dreamers, adventurers and leaders. And don't bug me when I tell you my son never shuts his eyes, because sleep isn't the only place for dreams.

/6 Comments