Monster会员Carole问道：经常会有人告诉我，大家真的很欣赏我的工作能力，并且如果我足够耐心的话，我会在我的公司得到一份真正意义上的领导工作。但是一次又一次，男士们似乎总是在晋升的道路上占得先机。就在上个星期，曾经和我合作领导一个工作团队的男士得到了这个产品发展项目，尽管这是我们共同合作取得的成果，而我得到的却只是热情的感谢。然后我被遣派回原来的部门，既没有得到加薪，更没有得到升职。
有些朋友告诉我，男人在公司里拥有更多的机会，那只不过是我的想象而已；但是也有一些朋友教我如果我的职业如果在将来仍然没有什么起色的话，直接走进公司人力资源部，拿出某个平等权利法案来要挟他们。显而易见，我不会这么做的，但是我已经厌倦了永远只能等待我所期待得到的东西。你能给我提供什么建议么？
专家建议：首先，抛弃“要有耐心”和“等待你期待的东西”这样的观念。我们谈论的不是你的生日聚会。从你的话当中我知道，我们谈论的是企业当中的性别差异，当然，还有一些你自己无意当中浪费掉的机会。
那些富有竞争力和远见卓识的男性比你得到了更多的机会，这并非只是你的幻想。美国百分之五十三的大学文凭的获得者是女性，但是在各个行业和职业当中女性仅仅占领了百分之十的高层职位。这就是说在你的行业里，男士获得高层职位的可能性比你要大整整9倍。
为什么会这样呢？当然这与那些男士们从小得到的训练有一定的关系——日常生活当中的训练教会他们如何勇敢的去承担风险，微笑着去忍受疼痛，装出一幅毫不畏惧的样子，并且为了取得成功愿意付出任何努力。而这同样与这样的一个事实有关——不论领导阶层组成多样化的论点多么动听，现实就是绝大多数的领导阶层都是男性，并且他们当中的大多数人都更愿意把升职的机会留给其他的男性。
但是这些事实并不是答案的全部。你说的话暗示出你兼有忍耐、被动和顺从的性格，而这种性格也会成为你成功道路上的绊脚石。要想获得提拔，你需要开展一场更有策略性的“解放自我”的行动。在有关自信、冒险和竞争力（企业成功的基本要素）的测试当中，男性几乎每次都能够胜过女性。但是也有好消息：他们通常以小于百分之五的微弱优势取得胜利。所以，你不需要为自己的性格过于担心。你所需要做的只是让自己的这些能力再继续提高十个百分点（就称其为百分之十解决方案吧）。到那个时候你就会发现自己已经处于许多男同事之上了。
举个例子，我敢肯定当你牺牲夜晚和周末休息的时间来进行研究工作，完成一份非常优秀的工作报告的时候，你的男同事正在努力思考该如何让这个项目更具吸引力，以及如何把一半以上的功劳归功于自己。不论是有意识还是无意识的，这就是我们的文化当中男性被社会化的结果。心理学研究告诉我们，大多数男性都会过高地估计自己的成就，然而大多数女性则会低估了自己所取得的成就。这样说来，男性比我们女性获得更多的荣誉还有什么好奇怪的呢？
让上一次领导工作组以及失去升职机会的经历成为让你终身受益的一课：如果你没有有意识地去计划自己应该如何积极地用自己的辛勤劳动来引起别人的注意，换取上级对自己的欣赏，那么你工作的方式是不正确的。负责提拔你的人不是别人，而是你自己！
那么怎么才能确定你真的学到了这一课呢？一个不错的办法是找一位高管教练，与他会面或者通过电话交谈，让他帮你分析一下你的情况，让他为你量身定做一份计划，帮你在所在的行业当中寻找自我推销的机会。
所以，Carole，很不幸，你现在正在经历的困惑可以说是意料之中的。但是如果你能够勇敢地承担起规划自己职业的责任，那么你的职业生涯会变得完全不同。
Do Men Have a Monopoly on the Top Jobs?MONSTER MEMBER CAROLE ASKS: I've been told often that people really like my work and that if I'm patient, I'll get to a position of real leadership in my company. But again and again, the men just seem to zip on by me on the track. Just last week, a man with whom I'd been coleading a task force was asked to take over the product development project that came out of our deliberations, while I was given an enthusiastic thank you and sent back to my department without a raise or promotion.
Some of my friends tell me it's just my imagination that men have more opportunity in this company, while others tell me to march into HR and threaten some kind of legal action if my career doesn't take off soon. Obviously, I wouldn't do that, but I have to tell you that I'm tired of waiting for something with my name on it to open up. What advice do you have for me?
WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS: First off, forget the "being patient" and "waiting for something with your name on it" thing. This is not your birthday party we're talking about. From the little you've told me, we're talking about some organizational gender bias, of course, but also about some unconsciously squandered opportunities on your part.
It's not your imagination that highly competitive and strategic men are passing you in the queue. Women earn 53 percent of college degrees in the US and yet hold only about 10 percent of the top positions across various businesses and professions. That means that the men in your field are nine times more likely to get to the top than you are.
Why is that? Well, some of it surely has to do with the conditioning those men endured as boys -- daily training in how to take risks, grin and bear pain, pretend they weren't scared and do anything else required to win. It also has to do with the fact that, no matter what the rhetoric about wanting to field a diverse leadership team proclaims, most leaders are men, and most men are more comfortable promoting other men when it comes time to give someone a shove up the ladder.
But those facts are not the whole answer. Your language implies a blend of patience, passivity and obedience that is probably getting in your way as well. To get that hoist up the ladder for yourself, you're going to have to mount a more strategic campaign of "putting yourself out there." In tests of confidence, risk-taking and competitiveness (the building blocks of corporate success), men outscore women almost every time. But here's the good news: They usually don't win by more than about a 5 percent difference in degree. So, you don't need to have a personality overhaul here. You just need to increase your storehouse of these qualities by 10 percent (call it the 10 percent solution), and you'll be out in front of many of your male colleagues.
I bet, for instance, that while you were working nights and weekends to do the research and write an A+ task force report, your male colleague was putting his energy into figuring out how to get visibility for the project, as well as more than 50 percent of the credit for himself. Consciously or unconsciously, that's the way males have been socialized in this culture. Psychological research tells us that men, on average, overestimate their achievements, while women, on average, underestimate theirs. Is it any wonder, then, that the guys seem to get the prizes more often than we do?
Let this last situation with the task force and the lost promotion be a lesson to last the rest of your career: If you're not consciously strategizing about how to use your hard work to actively position yourself to be appreciated and noticed, then you aren't doing your job correctly. The person in charge of getting you promoted is you!
So how are you going to be sure you really learn this lesson? One good strategy would be to find an in-person or telephone executive coach to help you take apart the situations you're in and make a plan for finding the self-promotional opportunities in what you're doing at work.
So, Carole, what you've been through is, unfortunately, par for the course. But the rest of the game can be different for you if you take responsibility for managing your own career!
编辑：高文轲
来源：中华英才网