How to Say It For Women: Communicating with Confidence and Power Using the Language of Success
by Phyllis Mindell
from Prentice Hall Press
Phyllis Mindell, an acclaimed expert on professional communications, shows women how to transform themselves by transforming their language; shed weak words, phrases, and gestures; empower themselves to win attention and respect; and get their ideas across with confidence and power.
Perhaps the best teacher of how the power of language can transform is an unexpected one: Charlotte the spider of E.B. White's, Charlotte's Web. Mindell demonstrates how Charlotte communicated messages that gained national attention and saved a friend's life. As a model, she combines female strengths of wisdom and compassion with the determination and power to make a difference.
As part of Prentice Hall Press's highly successful How to Say It tm series, How to Say It tm for Women is packed with practical tips, techniques, and examples that arm women to grapple with every communication issue, from choosing the right word or sentence to speaking, reading, writing, leading, dressing, and interviewing effectively. Readers will learn how to: shun words that weaken messages and make women invisible; sail through interviews; assess and develop leadership skills; say NO, kindly but firmly; respond appropriately to slurs, insults, and harassment; say the one winning word that gets people to follow directions.
True stories about women in every field, along with quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Carla Hills, Amelia Earhart, Elizabeth Dole and others, enable women to tap the power of words to persuade, motivate, establish authority, and make a difference-- without sacrificing their integrity, their compassion, or their femininity.
Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change
by Linda Babcock
from Bantam
Men ask for what they want twice as often as women do and initiate negotiation four times more, report economist Linda Babcock and writer Sara Laschever in the footnoted but engaging Women Don't Ask. With vivid research examples drawn from cradle, classroom and playground, the authors detail culture as the culprit in discouraging women from negotiating on their own behalf.
Men, socialized in a "scrappier paradigm," learn to pursue and energize their goals at work and home. The two key elements are control and recognizing opportunity. For example, girls, rewarded for hard work, learn to see control as outside of themselves while boys are urged to take charge. Boys are schooled to recognize opportunity and girls to choose safe targets.
Several chapters are focused on prescription; how women can decrease anxiety, anticipate roadblocks, plan counter-moves and resist conceding too much or too soon. The authors shine in their examination of culture and gender--and their optimism about how women can counter the culture. They falter whenever they adopt the "sexes-from-a-different-planet" fallacy. Most notably, in a chapter that details a "female approach" to negotiating. Overall, the authors have created a smart summary of research and used it to affirm every woman's urgent right to ask. --Barbara Mackoff
Combining fascinating research with revealing commentary from hundreds of women, this groundbreaking book explores the personal and societal reasons women seldom ask for what they need, want, and deserve at home and at work–and shows how they can develop this crucial skill.
By neglecting to negotiate her starting salary for her first job, a woman may sacrifice over half a million dollars in earnings by the end of her career. Yet, as research reveals, men are four times more likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. From career promotions to help with child care, studies show time and again that women don’t ask–and frequently don’t even realize that they can. Women Don’t Ask offers real-life examples of the differences between the negotiating habits of men and women, and guides women in retooling their attitudes and approaches. Discover how to:
• Take the first step–choosing to negotiate at all
• Develop a comfortable, effective negotiation style
• Overcome fear, personal entitlement issues, and gender stereotypes
Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success that Women Need to Learn
by Gail Evans
from Broadway
The fact that there are few women occupying top-level positions in corporate America has, for a long time, been blamed on a ubiquitous "glass ceiling." But according to Gail Evans, this is a tired myth implying a woman is a "person-who's-done-to instead of a person-who's-doing." In Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, CNN's ebullient--and successful--executive vice president puts forth a new thesis: women are not in star positions because they haven't yet learned how to play the game.
The game of business is played on a field where males have been comfortable since they were very young, says Evans. It's a game where winning is the obvious (and only) objective and where aggression, self-promotion, a tough skin, and an effective display of power are the signs of a winner. Women, on the other hand, enter the game disadvantaged, having been taught to be cooperative rather than competitive, to enjoy the process rather than simply the result, and to seek approval rather than assume success. In her entertaining, informative, and practical book, Evans sets out to level the playing field by providing instructions on how men play and by teaching women to play smarter and win on their own terms. In one section, where she offers such advice as "Toot Your Own Horn," "Accept Uncertainty," and "Be an Imposter," Evans presents a common business scenario. She shows the typical male and female responses to it, analyzes the problem with the woman's reaction, and offers advice on what to do differently. Writing in light, accessible prose, Evans supports her observations with both personal and professional anecdotes and covers the gamut of women's experiences on the corporate path. Evans's message is inspiring: women can learn to play the game as well as any man and bring with them a unique set of skills and experiences.
It's impossible to ignore a woman who has reached the top of her profession in a tough business and is still prepared to claim that "everything I ever needed to know about business I learned driving the car pool." --S. Ketchum
Women make up almost half of today's labor force, but in corporate America they don't share half of the power. Only four of the Fortune 500 company CEOs are women, and it's only been in the last few years that even half of the Fortune 500 companies have more than one female officer.
A major reason for this? Most women were never taught how to play the game of business.
Throughout her career in the supercompetitive, male-dominated media industry, Gail Evans, one of the country's most powerful executives, has met innumerable women who tell her that they feel lost in the workplace, almost as if they were playing a game without knowing the directions.
She tells them that's exactly the case: Business is indeed a game, and like any game, there are rules to playing well. For the most part, Gail has discovered, women don't know them.
Men know these rules because they wrote them, but women often feel shut out of the process because they don't know when to speak up, when to ask for responsibility, what to say at an interview, and a lot of other key moves that can make or break a career.
Now, in her book Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, Gail Evans reveals the secrets to the playbook of success and teaches women at all levels of the organization--from assistant to vice president--how to play the game of business to their advantage.
Sharing with humor and candor her years of lessons from corporate life, Gail Evans gives readers practical tools for making the right decisions at work. Among the rules you will learn are:
• How to Keep Score at Work
• When to Take a Risk
• How to Deal with the Imposter Syndrome
• Ten Vocabulary Words That Mean Different Things to Men and Women
• Why Men Can be Ugly, and You Can't
• When to Quit Your Job
Evans is not saying that every woman has to play exactly by men's rules--not at all. Women bring many inherent traits to the workplace that can provide them with a potential advantage over men, such as a woman's ability to form relationships, or her intuition. But women do need to know the basic rules so that they can understand the full consequences of their every action and how it makes an impact on their career.
An honest and practical handbook that reveals important insights into relationships between men and women and work, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, is a must-read for every woman who wants to leverage her power in the workplace.
Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
by Linda Babcock
from Bantam
In their groundbreaking book, Women Don’t Ask, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever uncovered a startling fact: even women who negotiate brilliantly on behalf of others often falter when it comes to asking for themselves. Now they’ve developed the action plan that women all over the country requested—a guide to negotiation that starts before you get to the bargaining table.
Ask for It explains why it’s essential to ask (men do it all the time) and teaches you how to ask effectively, in ways that feel comfortable to you as a woman. Whether you currently avoid negotiating like the plague or consider yourself hard-charging and fearless, Babcock and Laschever’s compelling stories of real women will help you recognize how much more you deserve—whether it’s a raise, that overdue promotion, an exciting new assignment, or even extra help around the house. Their four-phase program, backed by years of research, will show you how to identify what you’re really worth, maximize your bargaining power, develop the best strategy for your situation, and manage the reactions and emotions that may arise—on both sides. Guided step-by-step, you’ll learn how to draw on the special strengths you bring to the negotiating table to reach agreements that benefit everyone involved.
This collaborative, problem-solving approach will propel you to new places both professionally and personally—and open doors you thought were closed. Because if you never hear no, you’re not asking enough.
The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch): Valuable Lessons, Smart Suggestions, and True Stories for Succeeding as the Chick-in-Charge
by Caitlin Friedman
from Broadway
Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio offer advice for "both the leader and the led" in this entertaining and useful guidebook for today's working woman. Through quizzes, personal anecdotes, and interviews, Friedman and Yorio help readers to identify their leadership style and share support and encouragement from experts to help women become better (and more comfortable) leaders. Want to know more? Check out Friedman and Yorio's "Top 5 Reasons to Buy This Book" for the inside scoop.
1. You just got promoted.Yikes! Nobody ever taught you to be a manager. Your role models have been less than fabulous and you want to be better. We teach you how to be more mentor than manager. We show you how to be firm but fair. Armed with our book, you will learn how to get the best out of your employees.
2. Most management books put you to sleep.
No jargon and no need for an MBA. The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss Without Being a Bitch is a fun read that offers information without intimidation and includes all the advice you need to learn to lead, inspire and motivate. We include quizzes, tips, checklists and fun sidebars such as "Celluloid Bitches," and "The Girl's Guide to Gossip" throughout.
3. Your manager is crazy.
You're not alone. In our "Good Witch/Big Bitch" boxes we share both the horrible and the heroic--stories from women from around the country who have seen it all and learned their lessons.
4. You're not a manager…yet!
Unlike most management books we speak to both leaders and the led. We offer tips and suggestions for dealing with issues such as micromanagement, taking credit for ideas, managing up to get the promotion, office politics and taking responsibility for mistakes.
5. Don't take just our word for it....
Good management is a life-long pursuit. We'd be foolish to believe we know it all, so to help us fill in the blanks we got on the phone with women from all over the country. We include interviews with coaches, human resource directors, other writers, supervisors, the supervised, mediators, and social workers to get their take on the challenges and opportunities of being the chick-in-charge.
Forget what you’ve heard. Nice girls can get the corner office.
As women, we haven’t always had the best role models at work. We’ve either worked for men or we’ve had female bosses who are, well, big bitches. Woman still don’t have much of a road map right now when it comes to taking charge at the office, so the team who brought you the national bestseller The Girl’s Guide to Starting Your Own Business is drawing one for us. Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio will teach you to be powerful without being possessive, to be opinionated without being brassy, and to have a strong voice without micromanaging. You’ll learn just how to own the role of queen bee in a positive way so that you can be more mentor than manager, one who leads, inspires, and motivates.
So, you finally got that promotion. You’re the boss now. The supervisor. The manager. The captain. The taskmaster. Those days of taking orders, running errands, and clock-watching are over. As exciting as all this might seem, once the rush of the promotion is over, you might be scratching your head wondering exactly what to do. Being the boss is never easy, but it's twice as hard for a woman. It seems like there's no middle ground. Either you're the dragon lady who rules with an iron fist or the mousey girl who gets drowned out at every meeting. When a woman wields authority and dares to make tough decisions, how often is the "B-word" bandied about by her employees? How can she strike that balance between pushover and dictator?
Fear not. You can do the job. All you need is a little helpful advice to send you on your way. Whether you supervise two as a shift manager or lord over an entire corporate empire, Caitlin Friedman and Kim Yorio will show you how to step gracefully into your new position of power. They’ll teach you how to motivate your team without alienating them, how to delegate without feeling guilty, how to deal with office politics and how to handle evaluations, promotions, and even firings. And for those of you who are already running the show, they can help you become the mentor your employees deserve.
Inside, there are self-assessment questionnaires to help you find out where you land on the bitch or wimp scale; interviews with prominent female bosses, human-resources directors, and therapists; and advice from a whole host of experts. In addition, there are funny and informative checklists and tips to make sure you’re the Good Witch around the office and not the Big Bitch. And, most important, Caitlin and Kim will teach you the secrets to owning your role and loving it. You’ve earned your promotion, so enjoy it!
The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business
by Emira Mears
from Seal Press
In The Boss of You, Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, founders of Raised Eyebrow Web Studios Inc. and co-editors of the well-known webzine Soapboxgirls, set out to answer this question. As intelligent entrepreneurs and straightforward writers, Emira and Lauren offer insight into beginning—and sustaining—small businesses from the female perspective. Peppered with stories from women who have been there, from cautionary tales to success stories, The Boss of You provides readers with real advice and career options that will allow them to live their values and achieve their own version of work-life balance.
Whether you are an established professional or an entrepreneurial newbie, The Boss of You is the definitive guidebook for starting, maintaining, and enjoying your own business.
What Men Don't Tell Women About Business: Opening Up the Heavily Guarded Alpha Male Playbook
by Christopher V. Flett
from Wiley
Discover the deep, dark secrets of the Alpha businessman
As a woman, you know you're every bit as effective and capable as a man is in the arena of business-but that doesn't mean there aren't things you need to know about men and business. In this invaluable guide for the modern businesswoman, former Alpha Male Christopher Flett reveals everything you need to know to understand, communicate, and compete with men in business.
To some extent, business is still a man's world; here's how to play the game by their rules-and win:
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Know what the average Alpha Male is thinking
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Learn 10 things you need to know about men in business
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Force men to take you seriously
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Stop self-sabotage with male colleagues
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Get all the credit you deserve
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Be more confident and effective
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Learn to take charge and lead
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Never make excuses for failures
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Keep secrets-it's vital
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Never bring personal issues to the office
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Gain credibility and trust with Alphas
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Never look for affirmation openly
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Effectively deal with condescending or disrespectful men
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Understand why being "nice" gets you nowhere
Designed for Success: The 10 Commandments for Women in the Workplace
by Dondi Scumaci
from Excel Books
You are not imagining it. Women do face unique challenges at work. The playing field is not always even, the rules are often unspoken, and the path is rarely well marked. In Designed for Success, Dondi Scumaci gives you the tools you need to take charge of your future and achieve the success and satisfaction you deserve. Learn how to get ahead in today's workplace and make a difference to the organizations you serve and the lives you touch-without changing who you are.
Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders (Center for Public Leadership)
by Alice H. Eagly
from Harvard Business School Press
Despite real progress, women remain rare enough in elite positions of power that their presence still evokes a sense of wonder. In Through the Labyrinth, Alice Eagly and Linda Carli examine why women’s paths to power remain difficult to traverse.
First, Eagly and Carli prove that the glass ceiling is no longer a useful metaphor and offer seven reasons why. They propose the labyrinth as a better image and explain how to navigate through it. This important and practical book addresses such critical questions as: How far have women actually come as leaders? Do stereotypes and prejudices still limit women’s opportunities? Do people resist women’s leadership more than men’s? And, do organizations create obstacles to women who would be leaders?
This book’s rich analysis is founded on scientific research from psychology, economics, sociology, political science, and management. The authors ground their conclusions in that research and invoke a wealth of engaging anecdotes and personal accounts to illustrate the practical principles that emerge.
With excellent leadership in short supply, no group, organization, or nation can afford to restrict women’s access to leadership roles. This book evaluates whether such restrictions are present and, when they are, what we can do to eliminate them.
Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
by Thomas J. Stanley
from Andrews McMeel Publishing
Eight years ago, Dr. Thomas J. Stanley swept aside the mythical magic curtain of wealth to reveal The Millionaire Next Door. America found out just who and how common the truly wealthy were in this country¿and we learned the characteristics and habits that made them so. Now the author of the follow-up The Millionaire Mind focuses on one of the least understood but increasingly rich demographics: Millionaire Women Next Door.¿Why write another book that profiles millionaires?¿ Stanley asks. ¿The vast majority of the millionaire respondents (92 percent) in The Millionaire Next Door were men. . . . I felt that it was indeed time for successful businesswomen of the self-made variety to be heard.¿ And heard they are in this book that is destined to become every bit as informative, quoted, and inspirational as the author¿s earlier works. Readers everywhere will be fascinated by Stanley¿s thoroughly researched findings and conclusions. More than a simple extension of his studies of male millionaires, Millionaire Women Next Door presents groundbreaking concepts involving the nature, lifestyle, and business choices of successful American women that reach far beyond the scope of the author¿s previous studies. The book examines the choice of businesses elected by self-employed women, ranking over 150 categories in terms of their profitability and probability of success. It also describes the women¿s background, highlighting the fact that most millionaire women were raised in nurturing family environments that were literally training grounds for success, instilling the values that make this group one of the most generous in American society as demonstrated by its level of giving to charities, family, and friends. While many characteristics such as frugality and simplicity of lifestyle are similar to those of their male counterparts, Stanley demonstrates that most millionaire women work harder and do better¿at school, in business, and in investment practices. Millionaire Women is sure to be one of the most read, reviewed, and discussed books to come out this year. Make your own wise investment for a wealth of solid sales.
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