There’s a saying in fitness that you can’t outrun a bad diet. This also applies to money management -- you can’t outearn bad habits. Debt becomes the weight you gain, perhaps lose, but can gain back so easily if you don’t change your lifestyle. A scarcity mindset, feeling like there’s not enough, can contribute to eating too much or not saving money for retirement. Interestingly, I’ve discovered a scarcity mindset can also affect the workplace and can hinder the empowerment of women.  

Women’s History Month is an ideal time to examine our progression as women and the gaps we still need closed. For example, we may not be able to overcome the female wage gap in my lifetime, but changing our mindset could help us grow our finances and stature in the workplace.

Here’s how our mindset can impede or empower us. Cultivating an abundance mindset helps us manage the pain or faith of saving money for retirement. Or putting money towards debt – a discipline that’s way less fun than buying things we want now. In the workplace, having an abundance mindset looks like work departments that collaborate to reach goals rather than working in silos.

A scarcity mindset keeps us defensive and miserable. In money management, this means living paycheck to paycheck without the hope that drives us to do the most we can with the funds we have. In the workplace, a scarcity mindset is especially detrimental for women. It forms this woman versus woman competition or even passive female bullying. Ladies, our high school days are over and we should be able to support other women in the journey to succeed professionally. Often, the hurt another woman can inflict on her female colleague can cut deeper than the typical workplace suppression that comes from men. It’s like when a member of your own team sabotages the game. A book I just finished helped me connect the dots on how a scarcity mindset leads to this oppressive behavior.

In Jamie Kern Lima's new memoir, “Believe It: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable,” the author describes how three women ganged up on her like mean girls when she started rising in sales success doing QVC shows.

These women blocked her out of changing rooms and made childish attempts to sabotage her air time.

Why did this happen? Lima theorizes that women can perpetuate a “self-imposed gender suppression” because a history of seeing only one woman “at the table” makes some women think “...another woman at the table means a threat to my seat.”

Subconsciously this may be occurring. Consciously, we women need to fight the feeling of jealousy, inadequacy or defensiveness when we see another woman succeed. Gossiping about them, hoarding information, or putting obstacles in front of their achievements is truly workplace bullying. Instead, applaud women who are winning. Ask questions about their journey, encourage their next moves, and offer to be a champion of their efforts. Indeed, leadership is often lonely at the top. And for the few women who make it to the top, they need allies in other women and men. As Lima says, we can make a table together, or at least we should recognize that another’s achievements don't prevent our own.

For those women who do rise to be leaders in their industry or workplaces, help clear obstacles for the women around you and the girls who are joining us soon. Being passive or outright aggressive with other women won’t help us collaborate to right past wrongs and break stereotypes our male counterparts may have grown up with.