Businesswomen everywhere ask Gail Evans, the author of the best-selling Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, the same question: do I have to play golf? Her answer is a resounding no. “So what if you play golf,” she says, “they’re making the deal in the locker room and you’re never going to get in there.” Evans says it’s time to stop acting like “junior men” and start playing on the women’s team. By supporting each other, women can pave the way for success. BookPage recently spoke to the (now retired) first female executive vice president at CNN about her new book, She Wins, You Win, and the girl’s game that can make women more powerful in business.

Why do women think they have to play golf to be successful? The trouble we have had as women is that somebody told us back in the ’70s and ’80s that the way to get ahead was to become junior men. The truth is, most very successful women are very feminine. I don’t mean they wear frilly dresses, but you know their female side. They use their brains and the compassion they have as women to be successful.

How do I win when another woman wins? When a woman fails at a big job, everyone knows it was a woman. It’s not the chairman of that company that failed; it’s the woman chairman of that company that failed. And there’s almost always a female component. She didn’t fail because she couldn’t balance the budget. She failed because women aren’t into finance. That reflects on every other woman. The next time they get ready to hire somebody for that position, the guys think, Well, we gave a woman the chance at that and she didn’t do very well.’ So ultimately that hurts you. But when she’s terrific and successful, they don’t say it’s because she’s a woman. When woman are shining, the issue of “woman” is diminished. It’s just who does the best job.

And to become more powerful women need to form teams? My solution to this is that we need to help each other. I think of these teams as the idea that we’re connected. The idea that I care about your success, that your success matters to me, that I understand the connection between your success and mine. Women are natural relationship builders, so why don’t we have the old girl’s network figured out? We’ve made it artificial. We know how to do this personally so well. I know women who couldn’t walk into an office comfortably, but they can network with 43 people to find the best pediatrician. It’s like we lose all those skills the minute we come to work.

And the one that kills me the most: “I’m looking for a mentor. Will you be my mentor?” Being a mentor is not about a formal job. These are natural things! To get into the system that the guys have, we’re setting up these artificial structures when we know how to do it very well. We’re trying to reinvent all these things and make them complicated. Why is that? Women think we have to make it on our own, that there’s no integrity in getting help. I say it’s not even good business to refuse to get help. If you’ve got connections, you’re supposed to use them. I’m saying we have to start doing it together because one is not enough. One doesn’t get you any power. It’s when six move ahead that we have power, and then we can help each other when we’re stuck.

You tell women to keep their mouths shut about other women at work. Why? When you talk to a man you work with about another woman, the power of your words is five times that of another man. When you say something bad about her, be clear you’re putting the nail in her coffin. And if you put the nail in her coffin, think of who’s going to put the nail in yours. Watch your words carefully, and don’t get caught in the romance of being the one he trusts. If she’s not good, they’re going to get rid of her. They don’t need you to justify it. I’m not telling anyone to be dishonest; I’m just telling people that this is a trap you need to be very careful about.

I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This is the perfect guide if you want to find gratifying work but aren’t sure how to get started. Author Julie Jansen, now in her fifth career, gives simple, actionable steps for six situations that are typical of disgruntled workers (i.e., where’s the meaning; bored and plateaued; and yearning to be on your own) in this inexpensive manual. Taking you step-by-step through the process, Jansen urges readers to start by looking inward. “Understanding who you are your values, attitudes, preferences, and personality traits is the key to discovering the kind of work that will bring you personal fulfillment,” says Jansen. Most workers burn out because they work all day on projects that have no personal meaning for them, which is a sure way to sap energy reserves.

Jansen includes lots of quizzes and questions to guide your look inward, but the best part of the book is the explanation of the answers, which helps translate your unique attitudes and values into a meaningful career. The clearer you are about your likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, the easier your job search will be, says Jansen.

Jansen also tackles the nuts and bolts of the job search, stressing the necessity of making a clear action plan and taking small steps. Excuses like “I’ll have to take a decrease in pay” and “I don’t have enough time” won’t cut it with Jansen’s can-do attitude. Her handbook is a smart way to get going in a new direction.

No one seems to have all their financial ducks in a row, not even personal finance expert Janet Bodnar. She writes a weekly column on kids and money for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and The New York Times (she’s known as Dr. Tightwad) but in preparing a finance book geared to women, she realized she hadn’t updated her own will or put her kids on her insurance policy. “I would have sworn I had done that!” she says. Writing her new book, Think $ingle, which addresses specific money issues facing women, opened the eyes of this wife, mother and household manager. “I was the audience for the book as well as the author of the book, so every step along the way I was comparing what I was writing with what I was doing myself. Sometimes I could say, OK, I’m up to speed, and sometimes I wasn’t.” BookPage recently talked to Bodnar about the advantages of “thinking single.” What does “thinking single” mean for women? You always have to be financially independent in your own mind, no matter what your marital status is, no matter what your stage of life is. Even if you have a loving husband who handles the finances, you need to know his bookkeeping system, have enough life insurance to cover you and the kids if something were to happen to him, and have your own retirement plan, even if you don’t have a job. That’s what thinking single means: You always have to ask, what would I do if I were on my own tomorrow? Would I be up to speed on everything? You say that 90% of women will manage their money on their own at some point in life, either because they’re divorced, widowed or never married. Did that surprise you? All women start out on their own when they’re in their 20s, but what really shocked me was when you add in the number of divorces [just under 50%] and [realize] that the average age of widowhood is 58. Some women never marry, but the majority will, and yet of those women, the majority will end up on their own at some point in the future. I found that to be shocking. I think it’s in the back of every woman’s mind, but you think it’s always far in the future, so when you see that statistic, it brings you up short.

Women investors tend to earn better returns than men. What are they doing differently? Men tend to be overconfident with their money. Even when they don’t know diddly about money, they act like they do and bluff their way through. But confidence isn’t the same thing as competence. Women tend to be underconfident and underestimate what they know about money, so they tend to be less aggressive and take fewer risks. Because women go out and do the research, they feel pretty good about what they’re doing when they plunk down their money. Then they leave their money alone and don’t trade all the time.

Are women too averse to risk? I think they are because of the underconfidence thing. They worry about the future, and in the back of their mind is the bag lady fear “I’m not going to have any money” so they tend to be conservative with their money, probably too conservative, at least when they’re younger. Women need to be a little more aggressive, especially if they’re looking at long-term goals.

After reading the book, what’s a good first step for women who want to start tackling their finances? I would take stock of where I am. Don’t try to do everything at once because you can get overwhelmed with all this financial stuff. I would sit down and say, what is my number one worry? That can be a lot of different things for different people, and hopefully, they’ll find material in the book to speak to any of those issues, whether it’s dealing with your spouse, budgeting or saving for retirement. Once you get a handle on that, you can move on down your list. You need a feeling of accomplishment.