Free I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know by Kate White

to interview the singer. But then, a few weeks later, we found out that Rihanna had decided to do a summer tour. She would need publicity. We went back to her publicist and said that as long as she was now doing the interview and she had the tour, why not let us shoot her? Things were already in motion, so it was easier now for them to say yes—and they did. We’d jumped ahead a step, and it had paid off.
    Inform your boss of your progress. Even if your boss isn’t asking for in-person updates, send her periodic e-mails about the project. That way she can get a sense about whether there’s any kind of problem you might not recognize, especially if you’re new at the game. Better to have her course-correct than have the project later blow up in your face.
    Keep close tabs on what other team members are doing. If you’re working on a project with your peers, you must stay abreast of their efforts and make sure no one is screwing up, which could end up making you look bad in the long run. And what if someone isn’t carrying his weight or is doing his part badly? You don’t want to be a tattletale, but you can’t ignore the problem either. One strategy is to suggest to your boss that everyone on the team meet with her and give a progress report. That way she’ll see firsthand what’s going on.
    As you progress in your career, you’ll have projects where you supervise team members, and you’ll want to inspire the best from them. Peggy Schmidt, an independent college counselor in Silicon Valley, supervises students as they apply to schools. Her advice: “Get a handle on what your team’s strengths and weaknesses are. If you know what to expect in advance, you can modify how you work with a particular team member—for instance, what incentives or parameters are likely to produce results. People are surprisingly candid about their work habits.”
    She also feels that people are more invested in completing a task if they have the autonomy of selecting days and times for turning in work as long as those deadlines fit into the larger picture.
    Leave room at the end, says Lili Root, to “sprinkle on some fairy dust.” Always plan to finish a day early or, at the very least, a few hours early. This allows you to step back, look at your finished project with fresh eyes, and tweak it if necessary. It can also give you time to add a magic touch or two.

{   Develop a Golden Gut   }
    A t one point in my career, the magazine company I worked for was sold, without warning, to a large European corporation that took over with all the aplomb of a blowtorch. Management treated my staff and me as if we were summer interns who were just learning the business, asked zero questions about U.S. consumers, and immediately redid the entire magazine, with a young guy on the business side supervising all the layouts.
    It was a terribly unsettling experience, one of the worst I’ve ever been through professionally. Every day meant new changes and new instructions to follow. I felt worried about my own career but also concerned about all the turmoil and uncertainty my staff was going thorough. Fortunately, about five months later, I was offered a job as editor in chief of another magazine at a terrific company, and I fled the scene with just a few singe marks on my butt. Yet I don’t regret the time I spent in those stressful, unpredictable conditions—because it was there that I learned to listen to my gut.
    I’d always respected my gut, but I’d never put it to work the way I did during that time. At first I didn’t even see how much I was relying on it. I did know that since the ground underneath me was shifting every day, I needed to do my best to anticipate what might be coming next so my staff and I wouldn’t be caught off guard. I found myself saying things to my managing editor such as “Let’s do a , because b will happen and we’ll be ready.” Or “Don’t do c —it will only create problems tomorrow.” My decisions