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Pot Stirring

I don't know that I can agree with this idea of women needing to ignore all the popular wisdom about career. A mentor can be from outside the organization entirely and from a different business. They should be selected on the basis on their own accomplishments which the mentee might want to emulate. The championship is not a required criteria. Any person should have several mentors not just women. Changing the way you speak is also gender neutral in a sense. 

There is company specific speech coding people do need to adapt if they want to get ahead, be considered an insider and so on. This means adapting you speech to smooth out what is not considered company-speak. Failing to make these corrections may impact women disproportionately depending on on male-centric the company's culture is. It seems unwise to deny such reality. Being confident in many situations is to take on a big hairy audacious goal and believing you have what it takes to deliver. If you don't do as well as expected have a way to manage up and come out unscathed from the calamity - even better, fail up.

Such is the nature of all successes at work - does not matter if its a man in charge or a woman. If a woman sets up an unrealistic bar for success and therefore lacks the confidence to take on such goals, that is problematic an should be addressed. Being confident is not the issue. The advice on work-life balance is fair but the applies equally to men. You can't find such balance in a toxic, dysfunctional workplace no matter what your gender. Equally, everyone should seek such balance - making the required moves until they do so. Other than trying to stir the pot by making this about women's equality, nothing is achieved here.

I have know many women to fake it until they made it and very successfully so. They did not feel ashamed about it and their journey proves that this is a viable path - even for women. The last two items in the list about just being yourself (have I never seen that to work in all my years for anyone) so I would tend to agree its generally unwise advice. Finally asking for advice - this one is a mixed bag, depends on the situation, context and the level of experience the person who is seeking advice has. There is no reason for women to seek advice disproportionately to men - that makes them appear unsure of themselves and a bad signal. But timed well, it could be a power-move to seek advice. 

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