The Giggle Monster

sintecho — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 23:06:07 -0500

In my continual search to find the newest advice for professional women, I randomly came across this old post at On Phara entitled Channeling Barbie: Career Advice for Professional Women, and then immediately googled John McKee, the guy who is cited heavily in the post. Just so you're oriented as to the messenger, I'll start with John McKee, self-styled as "one of America's leading executive coaches" and author of Business Woman Web: How to Use Gender Bias to Ensure Your Career Success. Red flags, anyone? In addition to advocating using gender bias rather than eradicating it, McKee answers the question "people ask [him] all the time, 'Why is a man writing a book about women in management?'" His answer? "We need more women leading more of our largest corporations in this country. For at least 10 reasons, it is important that men start helping to change the current and frankly unacceptable situation whereonly about 5% of these organizations have female CEOs." Though I whole-heartedly agree that men are a needed ingredient in improving the situation, I think a huge symptom of the problem is that his approach is to take the lead in bossing women around to the top of the corporate ladder with questionable advice that is pretty much summed up in his tagline.

Now for his insight, as quoted by On Pharma:

Don't "giggle." Why? McKee has "never heard a CEO giggle." Also, women "laugh 126 percent more often than men. And unfortunately, this laughter is not relegated to personal life." Um, apparently McKee doesn't realize lawyers work so much that work becomes part of their personal life. Also, why is it unfortunate to laugh in the workplace? These questions unanswered, McKee asserts that he has in fact "heard many women giggle a bit just after saying something, and it diminishes the impact of what they have said."

At this point, I'm wondering what the difference is between a laugh and a giggle.

professionalism

The Giggle Monster