Hey, Mr. Summa Cum Laude, that 4.0 GPA might impress your mom — but it could be your downfall at the office.
Turns out that the traits that make successful students often stymie performance in the workplace, according to Tara Mohr, author of “Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create and Lead.”
So burn those composition notebooks!
“Good student behaviors,” she says in Quartz, “seeking outside knowledge, pleasing others, and adapting to authority,” are the opposite of what you need to be an innovative go-getter.
Employees should instead be improvising, taking risks, speaking up, challenging authority and trusting instincts, which, Mohr says, are important qualities in a leader.
Her grander point, though, is that “good student” skills are also traits stereotypically associated with “good girl” behavior — meaning women are being kept down in the workplace by their careful attention to detail.
The behaviors that add up to an “A+” are often those of women who grew up planning tea parties and doing just as they were told, while rambunctious boys were off playing with GI Joes and watching slasher flicks.
(That time you got grounded for underage drinking at Billy Highmore’s party could make you an awesome boss, bro.)
Of course, what all of these life tools have in common is how a person handles pressure. If you freeze and meekly shrivel up when something unexpected comes your way, you’ll remain forever at the bottom rung of the ladder.
In the classic ’60s musical “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” a young man goes from being a window washer to a top executive in a matter of days simply by being in the right place at the right time and giddily taking advantage of every single opportunity.
There is, apparently, much wisdom to be gleaned from a nice musical comedy.