This is a guest post from Rekha Narayan, who is an entrepreneur, a senior project manager, program manager, agile coach and the author of Idlis, Chai and Mango Lassi.

There’s nothing like a close-up to show you a character’s emotions. It is a simple joy – sharing your image with emotions for others to see. It is also a narcissistic view of a character.
Expect more of this narcissistic behavior at work. Everybody is out to save their job, prove they are indispensable. This is a vicious cycle for women especially. It takes women for ever to get recognized and known. They get caught in the trap of pleasing their bosses and co-workers and sometimes are working with a lot of women. One expects women to be more nurturing but I have heard stories that indicate otherwise.

Since women have a tougher time getting to the senior levels, they are apparently not willing to help other women.I saw this trend on IT projects and also when I was working with teams coaching them on agile practices.

All names below are disguised.

1. For a long time Maya felt she was being sidelined. She was working in a team of several women. Three of her leaders including her manager, her manager’s boss and the layer above were all women. Maya made every attempt to be friendly. She was hard working, stayed back to meet deadlines. She was better qualified than the others in her team. For some strange reason she alone was not being promoted. Maya had encountered several barbs, catty remarks and several critical comments during her performance reviews. At one point her performance was deemed unacceptable.
2. Ann worked in a team that had men and women. There was no doubting her integrity or the effort she put in. Yet when there was a presentation to the client team her work was never praised. She tried to meet her bosses (women) a few times to understand what to do. She was getting nowhere.
3. Kayla was a project manager who was very successful. Until she was assigned more projects than she could fit in. She requested back up and additional resources but no one came to help. Her requests were met with several counselling sessions with other women bosses. Kayla couldn’t handle the stress.

These are situations that did not end well. This is more common than we think. We seem to be threatening other women when we do well. This doesn’t necessarily mean that women do better when working with men. In a study it was reported that women are less funny when they crack a joke, putting them at a disadvantage. They are also more likely to take their stress out on other women while men spread that stress around. So we do have some eggshells to walk on here.

How prepared are you as a woman to work with other women and show the nicer side of you?

1. Are you prepared to mentor other women who come to you for help?
2. Are you ready to share credit?
3. Are you willing to promote them when they shine?
4. Are you ready to help them through the channels you yourself navigated?
5. Are you willing to let them move on and grow?

What has your experience been as a woman in the workplace? Let us know in the comments below.

Rekha Narayan is an entrepreneur, a senior project manager, program manager, agile coach and the author of Idlis, Chai and Mango Lassi. She writes about various topics – project management, agile coaching/scrum concepts, entrepreneurship, careers, leadership, memories of India. She volunteers time to coach students at MBA/Masters level programs. She also mentors a scrum community. You can connect with Rekha for you program/project management or agile coaching needs. You can follow and check out Rekha’s Linked In posts here.