Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers
Each of these three books would make a really good gift on its own to working moms, career women, or women professionals. But as a package they can deliver a heavy punch that propells your giftee to greater heights...
Let's start with Nice Girls...
The book lists 101 mistakes that women commit unconsciously to sabotage their careers. The author provides revolutionary guides to help working women of today eliminate the girl-like behaviors they became accustomed with, which hold them back professionally.
These 101 mistakes are broken down into seven categories: How you play the game, how you act, how you think, how you brand and market yourself, how you sound, how you look, and how you respond.
Some of the mistakes women make in the world of business include: failing to capitalize on relationships, and protecting jerks. Also sharing too much personal information, and avoiding office politics. Refusing perks and viewing men in authority as father figures.
Branding and marketing…Using only your nickname or first name, and waiting to be noticed. How you sound… couching statements as questions, and failing to pause and reflect before responding.
How you look… the best and the brightest don’t necessarily get rewarded with promotions and choice assignments. It’s those who are competent enough, sound and look good who move forward in their careers. Mistakes to avoid include smiling inappropriately and using gestures that are inconsistent with your message.
The book covers 101 mistakes, with notes on what to do to avoid them. In the world of work and in the world of business we’re always marketing ourselves. Others judge us on these seven points outlined in this book. Success comes when you can come across as a winning personality, based on how you score on all these points.
Success awaits the career woman, working mom or woman professional who plays the game, because that's what it is, and beats the men at it - it's still a patriarchal society out there in business and the workplace!
The Art Of What Works: How Success Really Happens
Women are renowned for their intuition. This book’s author makes the case that expert intuition is at the heart of all success. He quotes Leonardo Da Vinci…
“According to Leonardo, first you see what you can do, then you know what goal to set.”
This reverses what we’ve been taught. But in example after example, the author shows you this is what has led to success in a wide variety of cases, in business, in the arts, even in war…
Napoleon won all those great victories by leveraging a combination of coup d’oeil, expert intuition, and lessons from history. You search for what works, and that tells you what you can do. Then you go ahead and do it.
“This book tells how Leonardo and Jack Welch [the General Electric boss who achieved success in multiple industries, the same as Steve Jobs] did it.
"And not just them: We find dozens of others throughout the ages. Napoleon Bonaparte, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, and top companies like Nokia, Marriott, Johnson & Johnson – the list goes on and on.
"The art of what works is the secret of strategy, a timeless truth for success in business or any other field. This book presents principles, tools, and examples to help you apply the art of what works yourself. We study success, to see how it happened. "
“Our trail leads mostly through business strategy, but it leads also to science, art, war, government, the nonprofit sector, psychology, and Eastern and Western philosophy. We hunt for success from many angles. Time and again, in case after case, the answer turns out to be the same: the art of what works.”
A real-live example from the book:
“Schoemaker and Russo offer a real-live case. A gifted claims handler had an excellent nose for sniffing out fraudulent cases. It was a clear case of expert intuition: “She had that rare ability to make good intuitive decisions – decisions based on ‘automated expertise.’ Before she retired, her company wanted to find out how she did it, so that others could learn it too.
But, of course, she didn’t know: “All she could say was that she looked at such factors as lack of adequate support data, valuable property that did not fit the insured’s income level, evasiveness in the police report, financial difficulty such as loss of a job, personal problems like divorce, and frequent or suspicious past claims. "
“But how did she weigh all these factors and combine them with the more ordinary data on debt, employment, and income?” Women’s intuition at work? This book will show you how expert intuition works, how to leverage it to advance in your career, in business, and in many other areas of your life."
Why Men Don’t Listen And Women Can’t Read Maps: How We’re Different And What To Do About It
This book makes the argument, based on scientific research, that men evolved to be “lunch-chasers” and women evolved to be “nest-defenders” and that despite the equality that exists now in the workplace and at home, these evolutionary differences are deep and not likely to entirely disappear for at least another million years!
We communicate differently, among other things.
So, for the career woman or woman professional or working mom, knowing these differences puts you miles ahead of your competition – it also greatly improves your relationships with men and with boys (for the parents and care-givers among you).
The book is designed from the ground up to be an entertaining read. The authors intersperse the book with insights and factoids, such as:
“Seventy-four per cent of working women and 98% of non-working women name the biggest failing of their husbands and boyfriends as a reluctance to talk, particularly at the end of the day.”
“It's important for a woman to understand that if you want to be convincing or persuasive with a man, you should present only one clear thought or idea at a time. The first rule of talking to a man: Keep it simple! Give him only one thing at a time to think about.”
“Men can either speak or listen – they can't do both at once.”
“Indirect talk builds rapport among women - but it often doesn't work with men because they don't understand the rules.”
“Women's brains are process-oriented and they enjoy the process of communicating. Men find this lack of structure and purpose very disconcerting, and accuse women of not knowing what they're talking about.”
“Brain scans reveal that men feel emotion as strongly as women, but avoid showing it.”
“If you're a woman explaining an idea or proposition to a man or men, it is vital that when a man is speaking, having his turn, you do not feed back his emotions, as you would with a woman.”
“It is important to know that studies constantly show that, in business, a woman with a deeper voice is considered more intelligent, authoritative and credible.”
“When a male talks, MRI scans show that his entire left hemisphere becomes active as it searches to find a center for speaking, but is unable to find much. Consequently, men aren't much good at talking.”
“When women sit together to watch a movie on TV, they usually talk simultaneously about a variety of subjects, including children, men, careers and what's happening in their lives. When groups of men and women watch a movie together, the men usually end up telling the women to shut up.”
Reading this book, you get the sense that there is a lot we don’t know about the opposite sex. And then you start to see how a lot of the things you have observed about the opposite sex suddenly make sense. Very good read.
So, if you're looking to give a great Christmas gift or New Year's to a working mom, a career woman or a woman in the professional services: financial services, health services, insurance, education, internet and support, business, the arts, etc., these books will make a huge impact. You can gift the books singly, but we've designed the pack to work together to build synergies that propell your giftee in new, exciting quests to advance their careers maximally, while having fun all through the process.
Happy holidays!
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