Knew it all along

A couple of new books deal with women in the workplace, albeit with differing approaches:
“Seducing the Boys Club is equal parts autobiography and how-to manual. Ms. DiSesa bases her recommendations on her 35-year career in advertising. She recounts her fight to climb the corporate ladder while coping with divorce, breast cancer, remarriage, and sexist male colleagues she calls 'hooligans'. She lists seven deadly sins — humility, timidity, cowardice, submissiveness, blind obedience, visible fear, and hypersensitivity — as common female traits to be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, she also warns women to avoid male tendencies like getting 'drunk with power'. 'One of the greatest tools, or weapons, we have as women is flirting', she says, later adding, 'Men like women who like them'.” A half-dozen pages later, she says: “A female culture — one that embraces compassion, nurturing, collaboration and sensitivity — by nature creates a more productive, pleasant place to work than an atmosphere of fear, danger, and macho competition. Maybe a combination of the two cultures is the perfect workplace; it would be exciting but still fun.”
There are no maybes in What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business. The author, Christopher Flett, a Canadian-born entrepreneur, describes himself as a 'reformed alpha male' who is now dedicated to helping women outwit alpha males. Flett says the foundation of the 21st-century business model is 'authenticity'. But instead of recognizing the new paradigm, he says, many women keep hiding behind personality masks to play roles like Mother and Geisha or try to pass themselves off as 'one of the boys' by feigning interest in macho sports like ice hockey. At the same time, he accuses other women of committing a laundry list of typical female mistakes he details in chapters with subheadings such as Taking Things Personally, Making Excuses, and, in a description of perhaps the most egregious mistake, Not Keeping Secrets.”

Rico says these two authors probably wouldn't get along. But the whole premise that "the two principal tactics advocated by Ms. DiSesa are seduction and manipulation" is scary; Rico knows he's been hit by this act before in business, and the problem is that it works... (Guess that makes Rico an unreformed alpha male; guilty as charged.)