Alicia Menendez

Author, “The Likeability Trap”; co-host, “Amanpour & Co.” on PBS

I think sometimes the question when we want to try something new is not, “Am I good enough?” The question becomes, “Will other people think I’m good enough?”

I have started writing a book about how much I care about whether or not other people like me, with the original objective of learning to care less. I imagined women who didn’t care to be out there living their best lives, and marching to the beat of their own drummer. They, too, pay a price for being brazenly themselves, especially women who are ambitious and strive to lead. And what I realize is that that often happens in the early part of a woman’s career.

So she comes into the workplace oftentimes with a ton of confidence, wants to try a ton of new things, and somewhere along the way she is told that something about the way she comports herself is a problem. She is either too soft, too warm, not seen in the eyes of other people as a leader, or too strong, too assertive, too aggressive, too much, needs to tone it down. And so part of what I think we’ve gotten wrong in the context of women and work is that in the interest of empowering women, we’ve placed too much onus on the woman herself.