Kristin Gilger > Quotes

“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that men thrive more easily in this environment. It was built with them in mind.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“When a male colleague would say or do something she considered out of line, she would give him a pointed look, perhaps accompanied by an unamused laugh, and say something like, “Wait, did you really just say that?” The effect, Darbyshire said, was that “he knows you clocked him, but you’re not making a scene of it. But he also knows not to mess with you.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Think about finding your own group of “large ladies” with whom you can commiserate, compare notes, and network. It could be just the lifeline you need.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“the most successful women adapt their approach, depending on the circumstances and the people with whom they’re dealing. Sometimes they speak out—loudly—and sometimes, like Kim Guthrie, they “lead from the back of the boat.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She not only mastered whatever issue was up for discussion but she also became a student of those around her. “You have to understand who could cause trouble for you, who your natural allies are, and how you can get what you need,” she said.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“McGinnis said her biggest challenge was her “never-ending quest to prove herself.” But what people remember most about her is how she managed to run a newsroom without ever appearing to order anyone around.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She said women face far too many critics to add self-criticism to the mix. Her advice is to ignore the voice she calls “the obnoxious roommate living in our heads—that voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Challenging institutional habits means pushing back, willfully so.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“After so many years, I was used to it. It was just another remark in a long, long list of offensive, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive things said to me and others by people with some power or sway. But the truth of the matter is this: It wasn’t OK. And it wasn’t OK for me to be OK with it. For me to put up with it. To laugh it off, to excuse it, to use it as a cocktail-party tale. It wasn’t OK for me. And it isn’t OK for my amazing nieces, for my brave colleagues, for the women coming up behind me.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Many of the women we interviewed find themselves carefully calibrating their behavior in the workplace. They worry about being too motherly, too brash, too opinionated, and not opinionated enough. They worry about being judged.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Look, I think that women have been playing nice for an awfully long time, playing the game, climbing the ladder, being patient, accepting the tidbits and morsels that are handed out,” she said. “I think that we have to start kicking the door down.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“The breakthrough we need is when we’re at a point where it’s socially unacceptable for a panel or conference or boardroom to be all men,” she said. “The breakthrough will come when no one finds it acceptable when only one or two women are in anything. We’re not anywhere close to a place where there is true assumed equality.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“They described feeling as if they had never truly arrived, questioned whether someone else could do the job better, and mentally steeled themselves to the possibility of getting tossed at any moment.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Women, quite simply, are not supposed to excel at jobs and tasks that are designated as male in our culture. [If they do,] they are personally derogated, and they are disliked.”5”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“The most successful people I know don’t think of their career as a ladder but rather a jungle gym,”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that you actually have to lead by being who you really are. And you can’t fake who you are. —Margaret Low”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Tough is like bossy. It’s a crap word. But you do have to act confident, convincing, competent. You have to be competent and convinced of your abilities.” She also believes in being polite, convivial, and collegial. “I do believe in trying to work together,” she said. “And only when it doesn’t work, then you have to knock some heads together.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“McFarlin said she has worked with women who think the only way to succeed is to act as masculine as possible. That made sense for earlier generations of women who blazed trails in newsrooms, she said, but she doesn’t think the “tough broad routine” works any longer, and she is certain it would never have worked for her.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Focus on what’s best for you and then throw yourself at it. And remember that the cause of women in newsrooms will take on urgency only if we make it happen—together.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Every woman I know in the news business has at least one story to tell about another woman who helped show her the way.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“As women, she said, “we have to know ourselves and be true to ourselves and not try to adapt our natural instincts or strengths just because we think there’s some kind of mold we have to fit into.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“We all live with that voice, but the times it comes out the most is when we’re tired, stressed and run down,”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“the most important thing women can do is band together with other women. She doesn’t believe workplaces will change until there is a critical mass of women who “come to understand that they are connected to each other and have to support each other, and they have to play like a team.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Boredom was the thing that propelled me to look for more,” she said. “Every time I got a new job, all I thought was, ‘This is what I want to be the rest of my life’—until I did it for about two and a half years. Then I wanted to do something more.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“To a large extent, the women entering newsrooms in the 1970s and 1980s adopted the management styles that worked for the men around them. They were intent on “fitting in and getting along,”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“There isn’t a woman at CBS who wouldn’t have a comparable story or more. Did we do anything about it? No. Who was I going to report it to? These guys were my bosses, and there was no system in place to do anything about it. I just assumed it was part of the territory.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Most human resources departments have become much more sensitized to sexual misconduct in recent years, and that’s where you should go if yours is one of them. If not, tell your boss or your boss’s boss. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, tell another trusted supervisor. Document what happened and what you have done about it, even if it’s just writing a note, dating it, and putting it in a file.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“I’d been to lots and lots of editor meetings, but for the most part, the people there didn’t look like us,” Lipinski said. “It was kind of a comfort and calm being with her that night. It just felt really good to exchange perspectives and experiences. At the end of the night, we agreed we’d had a really nice time and it would be fun to continue and expand the group.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She always told herself, “So what if they get rid of me? I’ll find something else. I’m not afraid.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Being a leader means doing what’s best for the entire organization, and that is going to make some people unhappy at least some of the time. Live with it.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead