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I used to work in an office that employed almost exclusively women. During lunch a gaggle of associates would go to sample sales together and then come back and try on our new clothes there in our cubicles, because why not? It was basically a lady's locker room. The office closet housed communal stashes of feminine hygiene products and Hershey's kisses. There was a lot of hugging and a lot of crying. My boss was a smart, ambitious, well-coiffed woman who would preface her requests with, "You've been doing such a great job, and I loved this, but..."

Just what was going on here? Wasn't my boss supposed to be a Queen Bee? Competitive and gloriously mean, like the pant-suited bosses in movies always are? Didn't we all want to claw each other to the top? Um, no? The worst you could say about this work environment was that an endemic dread of conflict led to indirect email threads of too-niceness. And yet, strangely enough, almost all of my former coworkers have moved up and up, including that wonderful, supportive boss.

Well, according to the Huffington Post, researchers have found that female bosses who mentor other women in the workplace help not only their protégés but themselves, too. Christine Silva, the lead researcher on the study, told The Huffington Post that mentoring talent was "really a win-win. It creates a culture of talent development where everyone recognizes their role in developing a good pipeline of leaders." She also revealed that "women who developed protégés received an average of $25,075 more between 2008 and 2010 than those individuals who did not."  The article suggests that the idea of the "Queen Bee" boss, who doesn't want anyone but herself to succeed, is largely proliferated by the media. (And let's admit it, the Queen Bee makes for some good entertainment.) In other words, in the workplace, paying-it-forward and creating a supportive environment are good for everyone. Huh. Just like in the rest of world. Imagine that.

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