Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I'm Ashley Milet.

This time, why can it be so difficult to work with other women? We don't know how to overtly compete

the way men do. So men will compete on a day-to-day basis, say, I'm going to bring you down,

then go out for a beer at night. Well, we don't. We will cut you out of an email, maybe,

or badmouth you behind your back. But have you ever considered you might be part of the problem?

What I find is that many women are shocked when their female boss is not nice to them. Whereas I don't

know that they'd be as shocked by a male boss that's not nice to them. Coming up, we look at female

relationships at work and how to handle an undermining boss. If you've been listening boss, you've been listening to the show since the start, you may remember a podcast I did in 2013 called The Mean Girls Edition.

I felt conflicted about it, because let's face it, the world is

full of stereotypes and cliches about women being horrible to each other. But I did it because I knew

a lot of women have problems with other women at work. And since that show went out, I've continued

to get emails from listeners outlining bad situations with female colleagues.

These listeners often say they just prefer to work with men.

That view is borne out in some surveys, by the way.

But before we kick off today's show, I just want to say that my last job where I worked in a female-dominated environment was fantastic.

It was a small office, it was public radio, and we were all friendly and supportive of one

another. I miss it. And I'm sure there are lots of other workplaces like that out there,

but in this show we're tackling the darker side of female relationships.

I met two women recently who spend a lot of time thinking about this.

They run their own company, and they help people manage difficult relationships at work.

My name is Catherine Crowley, and I work as a career and life coach at KSquared Enterprises.

And I'm Kathy Elster and I'm an executive coach and a career coach.

...