Working Nice Girls' Mistake #3: Assuming the same Rules, Boundaries and Strategies for everyone

Based on the author Lois P Frankel, nice girls’ mistake #3:

Assuming the Rules, Boundaries and Strategies are the same for everyone.

This is connected to Mistake #1 that we are pretend that business world is not a game.

I keep coming to one particular example that happened during the presidential candidate debate of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton is a policy-based politician and it shows because anything that she says she will back it up with a policy. For an outsider like myself, only looking at that moment, she did well! I am convinced she would make a good president for the USA. Trump interrupted her several times, sure, but it is a debate and it is allowed. I still thought she addressed what needs to be addressed and deflected what needed to be deflected. She did well!

I then turned to CNN as they would always discuss the debate. One panel went on to say that "Hillary was frantic!". But why? She was not yelling, screaming or insulting Trump. She just stood her ground. Whereas Trump got away by not putting forth his vision and plan for his presidency and interrupting Clinton every few minutes with a one-liner "Boring!", "Lies!", "Politicians!". Then, who won the presidency? Donald J Trump.

It is really hard to wrap your head around that fact. How was this possible that Clinton loss against Trump? America then attempted to rationalize this by factoring in everything else about Hillary (that was not even about Hillary!); Bill Clinton's presidency, Bill Clinton's scandal during his presidency, etc.

This is a country that struggles to have a female leader when a lot of other developing countries like India, China, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand has no issue about it. They have female head of governments probably since their independence.

I agree that the mistake is to "assume the Rules, Boundaries and Strategies are the same for everyone" but the problem is not half as bad as what the author wrote. The book depicts that the boundaries to winning a game is small for women and even smaller for women of colours. It is an issue within corporate America!

Good for us, the rest of the world, to not be entrapped by their norms! Nonetheless, we learn from their mistakes.