Customer Reviews

What Men Don't Tell Women About Business: Opening Up the Heavily Guarded Alpha Male Playbook

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The bottom line for all women and "beta" males: This book is packed full of useful strategies we can all use in business and is worth every cent. I will be keeping it (hidden!) in my office from now on so I can easily refer back to it in difficult situations. This includes knowing how to deal with females as much as with alpha males.

The best: Getting inside the alpha male's mind was (for me at least) unbelievably shocking. My greatest strength is reading body language, so I always "knew" what they were really thinking but I refused to believe it until now. Chris has put into words what I've thought for a very long time. Having a much more typically male personality, I've always preferred to work with men and I have never had any issues. I bought this book because it was a suggested add-on to another book I was buying and thought it might be interesting; I'm glad I did. Perhaps the single most useful lesson I've learned from this book is to never make an alpha wrong. The strategies Chris lays out for dealing with obnoxious or simply misguided statements from alpha males diffuse the situations really well; they equip you for the common issues that many women face regardless of personality.

The worst: I almost stopped reading this book half way through because of the generalisations about women and beta males. Ultimately the useful strategies kept me going and I'm really pleased that they did because the second half of the book is even better.

What's missing: One thing that would make this book a lot better would be to integrate some theories of personality. Just like John Gray's "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", Chris unfortunately lumps all women into the detail-oriented (as opposed to big-picture-oriented) and feeling-oriented (as opposed to thinking-oriented) categories. In the MBTI this would be the SF or Sensing Feeling types. He goes on to describe the Alpha male as what seems to be the NT group in MBTI (the iNtuitive Thinkers). As an INTJ myself I find the SF characterisation of all women blindingly annoying. We don't all focus on details, and we don't all cry when provoked... I too have sat in meetings (and worse, mother's groups) and felt like I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than listen to the endless details I don't care for. About three quarters of the way through this book I met with our HR manager about something and she was going on & on about some insignificant issue so I thought "How would Chris handle this?" and said "Okay, what's the end result - what do we need to do to solve this problem?" to which she replied & I was gone within a minute! Woo hoo! But it's not only women who do this. My father is an SJ (the prototypical detail-oriented organiser who Chris' alpha males would call a great "pile-on") and my mother is an ENTJ (most likely the pinnacle of the Alpha type). I am left wondering if Chris believes that alpha females learned the role rather than that they were NTs to begin with? Just like John Gray, Chris claims that men are wired to solve problems that women bring up. However that is a personality trait shared by most problem-solvers (all thinkers of which many are female). According to the description in Gray's book, I'm from Mars and my husband is from Venus!

I have to tell ya fella's-if you deep six a female colleague over some small criticism of your work performance-you are engaging in emotionalism.

We correctly label sobbing, hissy fits and cutthroat cattiness as emotionalism because they are extreme reactions based upon heightened, and often distorted, emotional perceptions. Curiously, we do not label the stereotypically male traits of aggression, verbal guerilla warfare, or compulsive competitiveness as emotionally based, even though they too are extreme responses with a heavy emotional component that often get in the way of business working smoothly. When I read the behaviors of "alpha males" described by Flett, such as hypersensitivity to criticism and constant status symbol oneupmanship, I begin to wonder why sensitivity and snottiness are considered feminine traits.

Flett is portraying the business world as he sees it, not justifying it, but if you are a woman these guys just look like jerks. Also, he seems to pick the worst examples of feminine workplace behavior, like sniveling and beating a dead horse, stuff that annoys women too.

Something that Flett does not consider is that since about 1920 each generation of American women have grown up and been shaped by vastly different economic and political conditions. I was born in 1969, and as a Gen-X woman, I could not identify with being a shrew, a whore, a bitch or a martyr. (I also failed the beginning chapter's 20 question femininity test designed to ferret out my stereotypically feminine attributes. I not only failed it. I flopped. I responded "no" to every question, therefore, per this test, I have no stereotypical womanly traits. This surprised me since I have a persisting fondness for make-up, shopping and skirts.)

Still, jerks and snivelers aside, this is an interesting read for all women engaged in the business world. The older ones will have validation of what they suspected was the truth behind men's business behavior. And younger women will have insight into not only men's perception of business, but into the behaviors of older women, who are now just as influential to the ambitious careerist. Men in business should read it for the wake up call - "Is this really how I want to act?"

WHAT MEN DON'T TELL WOMEN ABOUT BUSINESS is an insightful look into the inner sanctum of the business locker room. Learn what makes men tick, risk and retreat in the corporate world, and why women are often locked out of the real game. This book is not just for women who want to play to win in business. Every man who ever questioned his status, doubted his ego, wondered why his hard work and diligence never leads to real success, will find this an enlightening read.

I read this book in one sitting. It is an oddly compulsive read. This author comes across as just a regular guy whom most women would probably perceive as a jerk. The chief problem with this book is its overly narrow focus. Its target audience is really confined to women who work in competitive sales-oriented environments with loads of alpha males. If that's you then you will find a wealth of good information here and most of it is hard to swallow, but good, advice. I, however, do not work in sales (though I do work with a lot of men), and would have appreciated a book with a wider focus. I did get a few helpful nuggets out of this book for use in my working life such as being less talkative. This book feels like sitting down and having a rather long, and sometimes tangential and irrelevant, conversation with a very interesting but self-absorbed guy who just wants to help women become successful. His approach may be offensive to some (let's face it, most) women but humorous in the extreme for others. Fortunately I fall into the second category.

I recently heard Chris speak at a professional women's business conference to a packed audience of women from a range of industries. His book details the jargon and strategies that Alpha males use to successfully earn their stripes. Women need to understand the nitty gritty of how they should communicate with powerful men if they expect to succeed in business today. In addition to offering vital tips and techniques, he also goes further and invites us to participate with him to create a new paradigm in which the best of what both men and women have to offer will be honored and used to create new millenium business practices.

Informative insight to the alpha male with characteristics that make the traits easily identifiable. Tactical advice on how to succeed in business. Entertaining anecdotes. Easy to read.

You have to take a little bit of what this guy says with a grain of salt. His writing style isn't particularly "good" but I learned a lot from reading this book, and I highly recommend it to other females I know. I work in a highly Alpha-male dominated field and found many practical suggestions in this book. I plan to read it again soon.

This book is unintentionally funny in its portrayal of sinister, conniving men hiding their secrets from naive and helpless women. No one needs this sort of politically correct nonsense. Anti-male rhetoric and self-pity for women is not appropriate for the business world.

The book is definitely worth reading. I think that Alphas mostly perceive the issues described in this book as obvious and needless to say, but person who grew up out of Alpha families or without close friends from Alpha society will benefit from reading this book. This book offers direct status quo of doing business in traditional business settings especially in heavy, financial and some other conservative industries.

At last a book that lays out the thinking behind the behavior I have experienced in the workplace. Chris Flett gets past the politically correct half-truths and shines a light on the attitudes and drivers, not all pretty, of our Alpha co-workers. I wish I'd read this 20 years ago!