Breaking Through “Bitch”

CHAPTER 7Navigate the Terrain: Cultural and Political Savvy

Reading the environment and using that awareness to tailor one’s behavior is a powerful ability for leaders. Generally, successful women are particularly astute, grasping a culture or a group dynamic and figuring out how to best use that understanding to take effective action. This competency is an important application of conceptual thinking, because it requires a keen eye for picking up on patterns and nuances and piecing them together to create a clear picture of the environment. It also requires that one takes that picture and figures out how to navigate within it—in other words, how to use the picture as a tool to think through “If I do X, group A will do Y.” At the basic level, ...