Struggling to get in step
Businesswomen sometimes have to choose whether to fit in with their male colleagues or miss a business opportunity. Executives' advice: Be true to yourself.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published November 26, 2006
If successful professional women from the Tampa Bay area ever tried to climb the corporate ladder by accompanying co-workers or customers to strip clubs, they are not eager to recall the experience.
Carly Fiorina, on the other hand, highlighted just such a moment in her recent memoir, Tough Choices. Chronicling her rise to the top of Hewlett-Packard - and her place as the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company - Fiorina relived her embarrassment years ago during a "business meeting" with colleagues at a Washington, D.C., strip bar while she was a young executive at AT&T.
"In a show of empathy that brings tears to my eyes still," she wrote, "each woman who approached the table would look the situation over and say: 'Sorry, gentlemen. Not till the lady leaves.' "
Fiorina's tale is hardly unique. Alex Sink, for instance, the former head of Bank of America in Florida who this month was elected Florida's next chief financial officer, has in the past told the St. Petersburg Times her story of being a young North Carolina banker confronted with the dilemma: attend a meeting at a strip club or risk losing a client's business.
Knowing when to hang with the guys and when to go home is an important lesson for any female professional who hopes to get ahead in the business world, several female executives from the Tampa Bay area said when asked if they had Fiorina-like memories.
"No matter what, you have to be yourself," said Rhea Law, president and CEO of Fowler White Boggs Banker, a Tampa law firm. "If you're trying to do something just to impress people or to fit in, it's never real and it never works. It just makes you look idiotic."
Law, who races cars and motorcycles because she loves speed - not because she's trying to fit in with the guys - said her missteps as a young lawyer were tempered by the fact that she had worked for 10 years before going to law school.
"I had already kind of become my own person at that point," she said. But Law remembers being in uncomfortable situations early in her career, when the legal profession was dominated by men.
"I had clients who didn't think a 'girl' could possibly represent them," she said. "But I had an expertise that was so unique, they had to use me. And once they did, they found out it was okay."
Marty Petty, publisher and executive vice president of the St. Petersburg Times, recalled attending a newspaper manufacturing trade show in 1990 right after being named vice president of operations at the Hartford Courant. She was one of the few female executives attending. But there were plenty of well-endowed, scantily clad young women trying to drum up business at the exhibit booths. "It was like walking down Bourbon Street," Petty said. "It was disgusting."
As she rose through the ranks, Petty said she routinely passed up vendor junkets to newsprint mills in Canada, trips that were infamous for eating, drinking and partying. "And yes, this is where the business got done," she said.
To compensate for missing such opportunities, Petty said she worked hard building one-on-one relationships with business partners.
"It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of guts because you've got to put yourself out there," she said. "But you just tell people, 'I don't do business that way.' "
Linda Simmons, president and CEO of RR Simmons, a Tampa design and construction company, found that having her family's name on the business eliminated the necessity for frat-party socializing.
"Anyone dealing with me knew I had the authority to do whatever I needed to do," she said.
That's not to say Simmons hasn't had her share of uncomfortable situations. As a young banker, she was enrolled in professional classes at the University of Florida when she and some classmates decided to stop in a local bar for a drink.
"It turned out to be a strip place," Simmons said. "And it was embarrassing. But more than that, it was sad because most of the women were older and their bodies were gone. It was sort of depressing."
Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or 727 892-2996.