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ProfileIssue: Aries 08

Nina DiSesa Shares Uncensored Tactics for Winning at Work in Her Book “Seducing the Boys Club”

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Why are there still so few women in top management positions in the corporate world? Nina DiSesa, Chairman of McCann Erickson in New York, thinks it is because women don't understand men and tend to follow the rules and this doesn't work.

She explains that women need to learn how to handle men in business in much the same way we do in our personal relationships - through what she calls S&M, seduction and manipulation. Nina says this has nothing to do with sex, and that in the end, everyone wins. In her new book "Seducing the Boys Club" she gives the rest of us who think that all we need to do is work hard to get ahead, a swift kick in the butt!

About halfway through her career, Nina decided that if she was going make it in the advertising business, she had to aim for the top. What she didn’t realize was that getting to the top meant she would have to make some major adjustments to gain access to that world – the world of men where arrogance and sexual humor prevail – the boys club.

At the beginning of her book, Nina asserts that men feel comfortable with their own kind and if women want to win, women have to be more like men. She also explains that women need to learn to appreciate men because men like women who like them.

“The most helpful things I discovered were little secrets and insights about understanding and managing men. We have to seduce them without sex and manipulate them without malice. And we must be like them. If we play our hand correctly, we can work alongside men as equals, and when the time comes, we can protect them, lead them to greatness, and even make them better men—at least the ones who have room for improvement.”

As I began reading Nina’s book, I was totally skeptical of this idea, yet intrigued by such a different approach. Why should WE change? I thought. THEY, those boys clubby men, are the ones with the bad behavior. Yet here Nina was saying that WE have to do something different to get ahead and she is the Chairman of an internationally renowned advertising agency, the one that came up with the “Priceless” ads for MasterCard, so she MUST know something that I don’t. I kept reading.

by ann janda

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