Every woman needs a professional nemesis
It’s OK to not like all your female colleagues – in fact, says Elle Hunt, having a rift with someone at work can actually turbocharge your career – without breaking the ‘girl code’
it may be a simplistic assessment of their decades-long careers, but it is nevertheless true: Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are both very good at playing nice. So it’s extremely refreshing to see that’s not the brief on The Morning Show, the flagship drama of Apple’s new streaming service Apple TV+.
After her co-anchor (played by Steve Carell) is fired amid scandal, Aniston’s Alex Levy is left exposed as the sole presenter of a popular morning news programme, and an ambitious reporter (Witherspoon) is being primed to replace her. Think Big Little Lies meets The Newsroom, with the professional rivalry between two driven, complicated women at its centre.
‘I don’t want your job,’ Witherspoon’s reporter, Bradley Jackson, tells Levy in the trailer’s climax. ‘Oh, honey,’ says Levy, face creased in apparent concern. ‘Bullshit.’
Due in the autumn, The Morning Show
will explore ‘ego, ambition, and the misguided search for power’ through a lens with which they are rarely viewed: that of women’s experience (as the choice of male-presenting character names seems to wryly comment). Watching Witherspoon and Aniston square up in front of the anchor’s chair that they want to either claim or hold on to, I thought: how great to see women at war – not over men, as is still typical – but over work.
In the 20 years from Sex And The City to Fleabag, society has slowly become more comfortable with so-called ‘unlikeable women’. We continue to struggle, however, with women not liking each other. The individual complexities of our conflicts and competition still tend to be framed in sexist terms, as ‘catfights’ or ‘not a girls’ girl’. It’s the stereotype that says we are by nature bitchy and backstabbing.
Consider the portrayal of Taylor Swift’s five-year feud with Katy Perry, even though – as Swift told Rolling Stone at the start of it – ‘it had to do with business’ when Perry tried to hire dancers who had originally worked for her away from Swift’s tour.
The oft-quoted motto (including by Swift) that ‘there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women’ is portrayed as the friendly face of mainstream feminism. But it does not easily accommodate the simple human truth that sometimes we are in direct competition – and sometimes we just don’t get on.
I’m a feminist. I support women. But that doesn’t mean I like all of them. Of the handful of people I have meaningfully disliked in the past 10 years, the malefemale split has been roughly even (such is my commitment to gender equality, naturally). For a long time, I felt guilty about my occasionally taking against another woman, but it has been liberating to accept that personality clashes like these are an inevitable part of social dynamics – and nowhere is this most often proved true than at work.
A recent survey by Totaljobs found that 62% of office workers said they had at least one ‘office enemy’, whether they be a bully or a mere irritant, while 43% said they had more than one. An earlier survey found that just under half of 4,000 respondents had at least one close friend at work, suggesting that people were ‘more likely to develop a rift with a colleague than a bond’.
Most people gave the same two reasons to justify their office nemesis: they bent the truth in their own favour, or commented on others’ performance. Women tended to clash with other women of their level of seniority or higher; it was the same with men.
The difference may lie in perception. In 2012, a North American study found that conflict between women was seen as ‘particularly petty and disgraceful’, with more serious, longer-lasting consequences than the identical conflict between two men. There was a tendency, said the authors, to problematise women’s difficult relationships as ‘akin to disease’ when, in reality, ‘moderate amounts of same-sex hostility are natural and expected’. In certain cases, when managed appropriately, I’d argue that it can even be beneficial.
Professor Brian Uzzi, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois, and a consultant on leadership, says the effects of direct competition on performance are well-documented. As long as the relationship doesn’t turn toxic, ‘The good kind of nemesis can really drive motivation, help you reach further, let you see the possibility to do things that you couldn’t before. And all of that, to me, means opportunity in life.’
Roxane Gay, the US academic and author of Bad Feminist, has shared publicly her many nemeses (though not by name) since 2011. She has said she finds their presence motivating, cathartic and fun. ‘I am able to be kind, wildly productive and have nine nemeses who I will bring down. It’s fine if you think it’s silly, petty or unnecessary.’ (She has since made it 10.)
My nemeses are entirely oblivious of their status – one or two, I’ve never even met. But as my imagined competition, they have helped push me further, spurring me on. They also help me clarify my own ambition and areas for development.
Professor Barbara Gray, director of the Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation at Penn State University – and an expert negotiator who has been studying organisational conflict for over 25 years – says the more you understand why someone provokes a strong response in you, the better you know yourself: ‘Someone who causes an elevation in your internal thermometer is worth attending to closely.’
When one of my imagined rivals secures a win, my internal response often tells me something about the work I want to do, or how I’d like to improve. Sometimes that is acceptance; the reminder that we’re all on our own paths, progressing at different speeds. But sometimes it is about the realisation that, yes, you do want their job (even if you only admit it to yourself ). ‘Why Everyone Needs A Nemesis: Harnessing Your Pettiness For Greatness’ by Elle Hunt is available in audio book and ebook from 29 Aug (£3.99, Hodder & Stoughton)
The good kind of nemesis can really drive motivation and help you reach further