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Tough Choices by Carly
Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It by Evelyn Murphy
GOLD Members listen to our Ask Leading Women interviews with Evelyn Murphy, Robin Gerber and Ronna Lichtenberg for FREE!
Work to Live
The Guide to Getting a Life
by Joe Robinson
I agonized over whether to put Work to Live into our bookstore because it's not for everyone. On the other hand its definitely for every women leader who resonates with the label "job nun" or "work-a-holic". If you would like to remedy your tendency toward living to work, Joe Robinson presents facts from increased productivity to increased health that support a mindset of working to live...and along the way makes the case for mandatory vacation time off - at least 2 weeks. Now, I'm all for that!
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What the CEO Wants You to Know
How Your Company Really Works
by Ram Charan
If you want a deeper understanding of the concepts of value creation and focus on outcomes that we discuss in Purpose, Power, Presence®, this pithy, easy to understand book is a must-read. Once you grasp and apply to your team, department, division or organization the fundamental concepts of this book you will be able to "think like a CEO" and talk the language of the levels to which you aspire. Leadership for women is not only about what we do well, being people people, it's also about the business of the business. As Charan writes, "Personality alone is not what makes a company deliver. It takes insight into how the organization really works and how to link people's actions and decisions to the right priorities. It is this ability, in fact, that sets the superstar CEOs apart from the rest." And Charan should know. He is advisor to some of the best.
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The Warren Buffet CEO
Secrets of the Berkshire Hathaway Managers
by Robert P. Miles
Looking for Level 5 Leaders? The Warren Buffet CEO presents a collection of profiles of CEOS who exemplify the "personal humility and intense professional will" of Jim Collins' Level 5 Leaders. Writing about Stanley Lipsey, CEO and publisher of the Buffalo News Miles writes, "…when asked what ingredients he feels make a good operating manager, the first thing he says, is 'Integrity.' He adds: 'Focus, continued learning, thinking strategically, communicating, knowing how to hire well, having your finger on the pulse of where you think things are going to be in the near future, and having a superb peer group you can counsel with... But you also have to have certain fundamental rules, and to be up front about them."
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The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell
by Oren Harari
When Oren Harari presents Colin Powell's leadership secrets (direct quotes and illustrative vignettes) this book zings! On the other hand, when Harari interjects his own preachy and/or prescriptive prose, it bogs down. In spite of that, I recommend this book because of Powell's balanced advice on leading for outcomes, engaging others and using your personal best when you lead. Of particular interest to many women will be chapter 1 (Know When to Piss People Off) and chapter 4 (Don't Go Looking for "No"). Tucked in near the end of this chapter is a quote from Katherine D'Urso, "Supplicants don't get respect." An gem of a leadership lesson for women leaders from a woman leader.
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The Five Temptations of a CEO
A Leadership Fable
by Patrick Lencioni
The Five Temptations of a CEO is a parable that reaches well beyond the typical self-help pablum that is so abundant in the writings about leadership. It brings into the light five deep beliefs (temptations) that will not only derail the CEO but will also impede the effectiveness of any woman in leadership at any level. This is a book to be turned into a lifetime of self-reflection and personal action.
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She Wins, You Win
The Most Important Rule Every Businesswoman
Needs to Know
by Gail Evans
I couldn't say it better than the author herself: "There's only one rule that matters, one rule that I have not seen written about in any book, article, or Web site. That one rule is: Every woman must always play on the women's team. Why? Because every time any woman succeeds in business, your chances of succeeding in business increase. And every time a woman fails in business, your chances of failure increase." Evans titles her book "She Wins, You Win". To that I add, "she wins, we win"!
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Searching for a Corporate Savior
The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEO's
by Rakesh Khurana
If you've attended Purpose, Power, Presence®, you'll understand what I term "the myth of the Charismatic Visionary". Imagine my delight when I discovered this thoroughly researched book. In Searching for a Corporate Savior, Khurana writes, "the vision of a charismatic leader is a poor organizing principle for contemporary firms." Beyond the reasoned arguments against charismatic visionaries as the standard against which executive candidates should be measured, Khuran provides deep insight into the search process and evaluation criteria for positions in the C-suite.
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Right from the Start
Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role
by Dan Ciampa, Michael Watkins
I have met several women who although they had everything it would take in order to succeed in their new job, handled the transition period so poorly that their failure was inevitable. Situations like that make Right from the Start a must-read (or must-review) any time you are promoted into or hired to a new position. Though many of the examples are taken from CEO transitions, the seven fundamental lessons around which the book is written offer solid guidance about how to assess a new organization and successfully step into your new leadership role.
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Profitable Growth is Everyone's Business
10 Tools You can Use Monday Morning
by Ram Charan
As a leader, organizational growth is YOUR business - whether or not you're in sales or new product development. Charan goes further and declares that "every leader...needs a growth agenda." Beyond this prescriptive demand, he explains exactly what it takes to create a customer-centric organization capable of achieving organic, profitable growth - and he does so with two purposes in mind. First, the health of the organization. Second, the resultant opportunities for personal and professional growth that healthy, growing organizations can offer. Profitable Growth is Everyone's Business is another great read from one of the world's top advisors to CEO's.
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Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman
What Men Know About Success That Women
Need to Learn
by Gail Evans
Learn the Rules of the Game! This is an outstanding book for women seeking to understand the game of business (as opposed to the business of the business). A great guide to derailers and how to avoid them. Gail Evans is, in a way, "every-businesswoman". She has risen to the top by a route that included time out to raise her children, she has faced the challenges that all women leaders face and learned how to successfully overcome them. All along the way she has learned success lessons from her corporate life, her personal life and from the men and women who have been her colleagues. I'd love to spend an afternoon with her...in a way I just have.
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Pitch Like a Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed
by Ronna Lichtenberg
Paraphrasing Ronna Lichtenberg: "You don't have to change who you are to get what you want." In Pitch Like a Girl Lichtenberg uses her own personal and engaging style to explain how to use your "natural powers...to gain support for what you want and to use the skills most women have developed at building and nurturing relationships to get people to share your views and...persuade other people to support you." She demystifies the differences between pink and blue cultures, helps you get in touch with what you really want, package requests so that people will say yes, talk about money with confidence - and without selling yourself short, and so much more.
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Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office
101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make that Sabotage Their Careers
by Lois P. Frankel, Ph. D.
Buy, borrow or beg for a copy of this book! No matter what page I turned to I found real mistakes common to women and useful coaching tips for countering the career sabotage. From networking to confidence, from managing your work time to self-branding, there is something for every woman leader. With sections that correspond to a self-assessment in the first chapter and a straight-forward writing style, Frankel has crafted a book that is easy to use AND easy to read.
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Make Room for JOY!
Finding Magical Moments in Your Everyday Life
by Susan L. Colantuono
"Heartware and software for the soul." The issue of balance for businesswomen today isn't simply how to balance work with home! It's about how to get the highest return-of-joy (ROJ) for the time and effort you invest in all the various duties and interests in your life. Colantuono writes, "How reassuring that joy 'arises from a sense of well-being.'. It is not caused by someTHING. It is caused by a way of being. And our ways of being are about the only thing under our control these days!" Full of JOY-breaks that encourage you to take control of your ways of being, this gem of a book shows you how to make room for joy in the midst of a life that is full of demands.
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Madam Secretary
A Memoir
by Madeleine Albright
I have to admit to skimming some of the details of political maneuverings that she writes about in search for the gems that I found in Albright's personal reflections about her rise as a woman into positions of leadership. These offer important examples of how another woman developed and demonstrates leadership purpose, power and presence. On presence she writes about an early lesson that enabled her later in her career to succeed as "a skirt" among all the many "suits" she had to contend with. "I had often hesitated to make a point during meetings for fear that it, and I, would be dismissed as stupid only to hve some man make the same point - and be considered clever." She learned to "Speak up!...Interrupt!" and with a great passion for generativity/mentoring passes this lesson along to women leaders coming behind her.
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Love is the Killer App
How to Win Business and Influence Friends
by Tim Sanders
I had a glass of wine last night with a colleague who, when talking about her new venture, said "I know I have to, but I hate networking. It seems so utilitarian and acquisitive." So, I recommended that she read Love is the Killer App. Tim Sanders presents the softer and egalitarian side of networking in a way that I've never before encountered. If you're like many women in business who intellectually accept, but emotionally resist the advice that they MUST develop strategic networks, you'll love the message of this book - strategic networks are also about enriching others. As Sanders writes"...the purpose of collecting contacts is to give them away - to match them with other contacts." Sanders not only details specific techniques for networking, but his life examples show how it's done!
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Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way
by Robin Gerber
Until Robin Gerber came along, there were very few leadership books based on important and successful American women. Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way was Robin's first effort to rectify this problem. It is an outstanding exploration of the lessons we can all take from the life of one of America's most courageous First Ladies. beginning with the most memorable events from Eleanor's life, Robin interweaves leadership lessons from contemporary women in business.
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Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon
by Robin Gerber
Robin Gerber has done a tremendous job highlighting the lessons any woman leader will want to take from the life of Katharine Graham (who is considered by Jim Collins, author of the ground-breaking book Good to Great , as an outstanding example of a Level V Leader - the highest). From a woman who considered herself a "doormat" wife to one of the most powerful women and successful business leaders - Graham's life offers lessons to us all. If you want to learn more, listen to our Ask Leading Women interview with Robin. It was GREAT!
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I Don't Know How She Does It
by Allison Pearson
This novel is a funny and home-hitting account of a working mom's daily trials, tribulations and conquests. Pearson is able to incisively mock the business world as we encounter it while simultaneously confronting us with important truths about what it means to be a woman leader. For example she writes, "Now here’s a funny thing. All the women I know in the City are Daddy’s Girls one way or another…Daughters striving to be the son their father never had, daughters excelling at school to win the attention of a man who was always looking the other way, daughters like poor mad Antigone pursuing the elusive ghost of paternal love. So why do all us Daddy’s Girls go and work in places so hostile to women? Because the only real comfort we get is from male approval. How fucking sad is that?” Of course, our leadership aspirations aren't all rooted in that motiveation, but it's something to think about...and that's the point.
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Good to Great
Why Some Companies Make the Leap…
And Others Don't
by Jim Collins
Undoubtedly the best book I've ever read on leadership, change and creating great companies. Based on REAL research, it turns conventional wisdom upside down by analyzing companies with sustained great results (instead of analyzing leaders with great publicists or to whom the author has access). Good-bye charismatic visionary, hello Level 5 Leader! Good-bye major change initiatives, hello spinning the fly wheel. Good-bye esoteric visions, hello the hedgehog. If you don't get what you've just read, run right out and buy this book! Good to Great will become the standard on change and leadership against which all others will be measured. A must for the library of any leading woman.
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Fierce Conversations
Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time
by Susan Scott
Susan Scott's book breathes life into the concept of dialogue. Actually it breathes fierceness into it. But don't be alarmed, by "fierce" she means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled. The concept of fierce conversations is especially important for women leaders who often struggle with one inner voice that demands, "be kind" while another demands, "be direct". Scott reconciles these into one voice that counsels, "be fierce". As she writes, "While no single conversation is guaranteed to change everything, any single conversation can." But only if it's fierce. If you don't understand, buy this book today!
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Execution
The Discipline of Getting Things Done
by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan
Good bye leader versus manager. Hello, leader/manager! Execution is compendium of wisdom on and concrete examples of how to create corporate cultures of accountability and excellence. The many illustrations of straight delivery of important messages provide women leaders with models for communicating with a directness that men understand and are comfortable with. The book's lessons also move us toward an understanding of the symbiotic relationship between vision and execution. As Charan and Bossidy write, "Execution...is the missing link between aspiration and results...it is a major, indeed, THE major - job of a business leader. If you don't know how to execute, the whole of your effort as a leader will always be less than the sum of its parts."
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Build Your Career
A Workbook for Advancing in an Organization
by Susan L. Colantuono
Krista Hiddema, President e2r Solutions calls Build Your Career "The best book in the genre." Build Your Career isn't a book to read, it's a book to do! It's filled with dozens of activities built around a framework of six core action areas - assessing current job effectiveness, knowing your motivated skills, identifying career options, setting career goals, networking and building a career action plan. Though written for career planning within an organization, readers have successfully applied the framework to build careers by movement across organizations. The book is especially useful for leaders who are early in their careers.
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Backfire
Carly Fiorina's High Stakes Battle for the Soul
of Hewlett Packard
by Peter Burrows
Read this book for examples of strategic thinking, engagement strategies, risk taking and bold strokes as you follow the maneuvers and battles leading up to the merger between Compaq and Hewlett Packard. Whether or not you admire Carly Fiorina, there are lessons for women executives in nearly every chapter as well as insights into her leadership style. Burrows quotes Fiorina on leadership, "The art of leadership is about balance... when to push and when to back off. When to teach and when to let people make a mistake. Because to get systemic, long-lasting change, people have to really understand it and they have to own it." One of my favorite lessons for women leaders arises when Burrows writes about Fiorina's confrontation with the press over that AT&T might have considered bribery. She calmly shot down the allegations and "somehow she managed to be firm and outraged without seeming emotional or defensive." Wish we could bottle and sell that!
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