This kissy-kissy girlie chat destroys women's careers...but I'd LOVE to know where you got those shoes

This kissy-kissy girlie chat destroys women's careers...but I'd LOVE to know where you got those shoes



We’ve all done it.Shop germanww2uniforms at our moncler outlet store, factory outlet, more than 2pcs get big discount. We meet another woman for the first time in a professional context, let’s say at a conference, and instead of mainlining white wine – the macho way to get through these things – we do instant intimacy instead, becoming new best friends forever after five minutes and one glass of sparkling water.



We paw at each other’s jackets, ask about hairdressers, husbands, shoes, children – anything really, rather than the dread topic on the agenda, which is all too often something to do with women not on boards, women never at the top, and why women aren’t ruling the world.



Yes, I do it all the time. In fact, I think that once – at a symposium on women in the media – I may even have asked Cherie Blair (the Queen of Overshare, who told the world that Tony still excited her ‘in every possible way’ and how baby Leo was conceived after she’d failed to pack her diaphragm in her weekend bag for Balmoral) where she got her suit.



I didn’t realize how risky this was, not till last week anyway. For while businessmen might go shooting or play golf for matey bonding and blokeish banter, they never become ‘bezzies’. Not like we do.



They tend to talk about guns, cars, business, sport, anything but their home lives, which they are there to escape from. ‘Good high-flying birds,You will find so many wonderful radioshackcycling with high quality and low price.’ is about as profoundly emotional as things go.



Two men, even if they’ve known each other for years,New arrivals in the supraskateshoes collections stick to this reputation. will rarely anatomise their wives, marriages, or sex lives over lunch, as two female perfect strangers will.



I had lunch, for the first time, with an executive last week who vouchsafed to me details of her polymorphous sex life that made me choke on my linguine – details that will remain with me till the end of days.



But if one man asks another ‘How are you, old boy?’ his interlocutor will grunt ‘Fine’ even if he’s in the throes of a gruesome divorce, then change the subject to something more interesting, like the rugby.



In fact, most won’t use the word ‘relationship’ at all – they don’t like admitting they might be in one – and would never discuss their personal lives or feelings with a colleague.

I thought this was quite sweet and a bit sad, for a while. I thought that men were missing out on something, in their instinctive reluctance to do the Californian, confessional, kissy-kissy style that often characterises female interpersonal, professional relations.



Now I think that: 1) Their way is the only sane way to conduct business. And 2) It in fact explains a lot about the comparative success rates of men and women in work, if you measure ‘success’ by pay and the number of women in senior positions, that is.



Just look at the relationship between Sunday Times journalist Isabel Oakeshott and economist Vicky Pryce, for example, as charted by their emails to each other.

Only at the very start was there any degree of formality. Then the journalist suggested the two of them nipped away for a girlie spa break, perhaps in sunny Greece, so that Vicky Pryce could give her side of the story (always a fatal mistake).



When her hook had gone in, it was no longer ‘all the best’ but ‘love Isabel’. Pryce returned this with a ‘love Vicky’, and, soon, a ‘lots of love Vicky’.



What is wrong here is that the two women were performing a business transaction – Vicky wanted to ‘nail’ her ex,Buy fauxfurwraps at the online outlet. Isabel wanted a story – but they dolled it up with a synthetic topdressing of friendship.



They fertilised their deal with a mulch of intimate details about their sleep, babies, husbands and holidays, sprinkling kisses at the end of their exchanges. When it went wrong – as it was bound to – the pretence ended. The contact dumped the hack, and everyone felt bad.



‘When you are building relationships, you have to think very carefully about what to share,’ says the headhunter Heather McGregor, of Taylor Bennett. ‘People will only do business with those they trust, so leaders have to share a certain amount, but never too much.Shop the latest canadagoosemontebello on the world's largest fashion ... There have to be boundaries, or things unravel fast.’



Women all too often yield to this Venusian urge to blur the boundaries between the personal and professional. I know I do, because I’ve done it. But I do think it contributes to our well-documented, continuing failures to become top dog – because it is, in short, unprofessional.



So it pains me to say it, but we could actually learn from men that talking about our partners, home lives and sex lives, as we do at the drop of a hat, is dangerous ground. It risks betrayal and backstabbing. It’s bad for business.



It’s high stakes to trade intimacy for advantage, as frenemies Pryce and Oakeshott did. The fake female friendship they established too fast naturally failed at the first hurdle. So we shouldn’t do it – it debases the value of true and lasting friendships between women.



Still, stopping’s going to be hard. It’s such a quick, easy, but ultimately facile way of establishing a connection.



So where did you say you got your jacket again?

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