Yet another social science study tells women what we already know - being flirtatious gets us further faster than acting all tough and macho around the office.
The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the London School of Economics "found that flirtation . . . conveys assertiveness and power, from someone who is also concerned about satisfying their own interests," and that combination led to 20% improvements in the deals negotiated by study participants.
But Don't Be Too Friendly
Flirting, warned the researchers, is not the same as friendliness and warmth, behavior that can get you marked as a chump who doesn't know your own value.
The perfect mix, say the academics, "combines warmth, friendliness, and affiliation with flirtation, including playfulness, flattery, and sexiness." They direct our attention to Joan Holloway from Mad Men as an effective deployer of the flirtatious weapon of mass destruct . . . uh . . . influence.
Do You Need to Be Young and Beautiful?
I've taught beginning deposition skills for more than fifteen years for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and I always give the women the option of flirting their way to the information they need.
Listen, I was never a beautiful woman. Doesn't matter. At the risk of offending my few male readers - men are chumps for flattery. You can flirt your backside off at 60 (yes, I'm 60) and get what you want. My mother - god bless her - is 88 and she has, count 'em - three men who drive her to the store and doctor appointments, fix her small appliances, and take care of her pool and her yard.
Mom - also not a raving beauty by beauty magazine standards - is a survivor. And a female survivor of the "Great Generation" primarily needed to know how to get and keep a man. I rejected her example for decades. It just so happened that I love men and love to flirt - passions that just happen to work in the workplace.
You Cannot Fake This
People like to be liked and men, in particular, like to be liked for being male by a woman in full possession of her self-esteem and comfortable with her sexuality.
You cannot fake this.
To flirt effectively with men at work you must truly dig them.
There is no worse signal that you are an untrustworthy negotiation partner than to be perceived as manipulative, deceptive, and inauthentic.
The good news, of course, is that men are pretty easy to fool when it comes to your interest in them.
Women, on the other hand, all seem to have been given the super-secret decoder ring in their Cheerios box before they were in grade school.
Don't try to flatter us. We will think of the twenty-five reasons why you can't possibly believe your own B.S. before we melt into a puddle at your feet.
The number of men who can literally charm the pants off a woman who I've known in a career crawling with the male gender I can count on one hand.
There are far more Joan Holloways than there are Don Drapers. Far, far more.
How Do You Flirt Successfully With Someone You Don't Find Attractive?
You don't. It's not possible. The key is this - everyone is attractive if you're looking for the good rather than the bad. I've never known anyone who was so thoroughly repugnant that I couldn't find something to love in them.
So go get 'em ladies. This is not crass manipulation. This is recognizing the desires of your fellows and caring deeply enough about them to find what is beautiful and compliment (and complement) it.
