Book Beat

Wired for Authenticity: Seven Practices to Inspire, Adapt, & Lead

The Politics of Promotion (©2015, Jossey-Bass), by Bonnie Marcus, offers women the tools and guidance they need to successfully navigate the realities of their organization, emphasizing the need to understand office politics to get the promotions and recognition they deserve. It shows women how to navigate office politics successfully, build and nurture key relationships, get comfortable with self-promotion, avoid potentially disastrous blindsides and ultimately, advance their careers. The book covers how to:


  • Identify your value proposition;
  • Navigate office politics successfully;
  • Effectively and authentically promote yourself without backlash;
  • Build relationships of influence and position yourself with key stakeholders;
  • Network with power and intent, especially with those who have power over your advancement;
  • Find allies, champions, and sponsors to move your career forward.
 
You Are Singletasking: Get More Done One Thing at a Time

Woman UP! Overcome the 7 Deadly Sins that Sabotage Your Success (©2014, Morgan James Publishing), by Aimee Cohen, exposes common self-sabotaging and career-killing behaviors that keep women from success while inspiring women to take an active role in their own accomplishments. Within each chapter are practical action steps, tips, and solutions to overcoming the deadly sins and achieving success, as well as inspiring quotes from women in business, politics, and Hollywood. Here the author offers 12 tips to transform your negotiating skills.


  • Be Yourself: Don’t be an angel in the office, and then all of the sudden show up as a devil in the negotiating room. Nothing is more off-putting or confusing to a boss or hiring manager than having your alter ego do the negotiating for you.
  • Get a Goal: Know what you’re trying to achieve before the negotiation even begins.
  • Know Your Bottom Line: Figure out ahead of time how low you’ll go and when you’ll walk away from that new job or opportunity.
  • Be Realistic: Do your homework and set realistic expectations. If you know the position only pays $100K, then asking for $250K is probably not going to happen.
  • Script It Out: Everyone gets flustered and nervous in stressful situations, so scripting out what you want to say beforehand, and practicing saying those words can mean the difference between a win or a loss.
  • Anticipate Objections: Proactively think about any and all reasons why the other person would say “no”, and plan out your responses accordingly.
  • Bring Alternatives: Come prepared with your first choice, your ideal outcome, but also bring alternatives to keep the conversation going until you reach a successful compromise.
  • Avoid Emotion: Tom Hanks said, “There’s no crying baseball,” and there is also no crying in negotiations. Keep your emotions in check and save the tears or squeals of joy for the bathroom afterwards. This is when you need a poker face.
  • Practice Makes Perfect: Don’t expect to be a negotiating guru if you only do it once every few years. It takes practice. Go to a garage sale and practice negotiating for junk before you try to negotiate for something more meaningful.
  • Seek Support: It takes a village to raise a child, and it can also take a village of support and encouragement to raise an assertive woman. Rallying support of your efforts is an effective way to create accountability. There’s no backing out and no retreat.
  • Think of a Third Person: Women can find negotiating for themselves painful and difficult, but thinking of who else would benefit from a successful outcome is often the motivation they need to get the job done.
  • Celebrate Success: Instead of thinking of negotiating as an all or nothing proposition, find a way to celebrate what you did gain. The reality is that women don’t like to ask, and would rather have root canal surgery without anesthesia than negotiate a higher starting salary, a bigger raise, or a more advanced promotion. Not negotiating is not an option, and it will ultimately end up killing their careers.
 
You Are Singletasking: Get More Done One Thing at a Time

The Association CEO’s Guide To Improving Organizational Performance (©2015, Advanced Solutions International), by Bob Alves, ASI’s Chairman & CEO, and Don Robertson, ASI’s President & CTO, provides best-practices strategies lessons, solutions to problems, self-assessments, and results-based case studies to help you gain insight into what to do to adapt to the massive changes upon us. The book focuses on lessons learned in increasing membership engagement and retention, reducing costs, and improving organizational performance. The book is available in two editions: one for associations/membership organizations and another for the not-for-profit/fundraising audience. tools in this book, anyone can inspire an unprecedented level of performance in their teams.


 
You Are Singletasking: Get More Done One Thing at a Time

Known as Generation Z, a group of second-wave millennials—those born between 1990 and 2000—now make up the bulk of new employees entering the American workforce. According to Bruce Tulgan, author of Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: Teaching the Missing Basics to Today's Young Talent (©2015, Wiley/Jossey-Bass), the number one challenge with today's young talent is a problem hiding in plain sight: the ever-widening soft skills gap. Today's newest young workforce has so much to offer—new technical skills, ideas, perspectives, and energy. Yet too many of them are held back because of their weak soft skills. The key to teaching young people the missing soft skills lies in breaking those skills down into their component parts and concentrating on one component at a time with the help of a teaching-style manager. The book offers exercises that can be done in less than an hour within a team meeting or an extended one-on-one. The exercises are easily modified and customized and can be used as take-home exercises for any individual or group or to guide one-on-one discussions with direct reports.