From the Back Cover
Success secrets of today's most prominent female executives
12 Proven Strategies Women Can Use to Break Through the Walls of Powerand Land Today's Top Corporate Jobs
- FACT: Only two of the Fortune 500 companies are headed by women
- FACT: Only 83 women versus 2,267 men hold the clout titles in corporate Americachairman, CEO, vice chairman, president, COO, SEVP, and EVP
- FACT: Only 2.7 percent of the top-earner spots in the Fortune 50063 positions out of 2,320are held by women
The statistics, while stark, are not insurmountable.
What Every Successful Woman Knows reveals 12 strategies women must follow to break out of their career stalls and vault into the top corporate echelons. More than 200 womensenior corporate executivesshare insights into what it takes to get and keep the power in today's business world. Turn to any page in this practical guide for tips and techniques on:
- The importance of forming professional alliances, and making them count
- Five tips to effective listening, and ten tips on the art of presenting
- A four-step strategy to creating a signature stylethen making that style an asset to the firm
Nearly a century after winning the right to vote, woman are still fighting for the right to attain and wield corporate power. What Every Successful Woman Knows goes straight to the sourcesuccessful womento determine what they did to climb the corporate ladder, and how other women can follow their examples to permanently shatter the glass ceiling.
Despite the inroads women have made into middle and upper corporate management in the past decade, true corporate power in the United States remains an overwhelmingly male alliance. And as the education levels, capabilities, and relevant experience of women rise, so do their frustrations at being left behind as their male counterparts reap the rewards.
What Every Successful Woman Knows shows women how to acquire the training, political savvy, and navigational skills they need to take their rightful places as corporate leaders. Based on interviews with more than 200 corporate women who candidly reveal both their successes and what they might have done differentlyand bolstered by the unique perspectives of its co-authors, a man and a woman who have both been business insiders, senior executives, and canny observers of corporate AmericaWhat Every Successful Woman Knows is a useful, helpful resource for today's corporate woman. It establishes nothing less than a comprehensive women's power agenda, a roadmap for breaking out and going after real corporate power.
More than just discussing the questions of what women must do to achieve corporate success, What Every Successful Woman Knows concentrates on how. Its twelve success strategies constitute an effective action plan for gaining recognition and equality in executive offices and corporate boardrooms. Look to its hands-on, specific guidelines and strategies to discover how to:
- "Fit in" with the organizational cultureand succeed
- Develop a branding campaign when the brand is You
- Navigate the political shoals and currentsand emerge a winner
- Manage and control sex and relationships at the office
- Become a multispecialistand create your own fast track
What Every Successful Woman Knows doesn't simply dwell on the already well-documented gender inequities in corporate America. Instead, it takes a proactive approach that shows women how to overcome top-level gender biases. By detailing long-range strategies for driving change, building power bases, and reaching for the top jobs in any organization, it will increase the odds of women moving above and beyond prevailing corporate hierarchiesand reaching the critical, decision-making positions of power.
About the Author
Janice Reals Ellig is a managing director and partner at the executive search firm of Gould, McCoy & Chadick. A specialist in organizational change, succession planning, and management development, Reals Ellig was previously with Heidrick & Struggles and held executive-level marketing and human resources positions at Ambac Financial Group, Citibank, and Pfizer. Quoted in Fortune, Mademoiselle, Working Woman, and Newsday, she is a regular speaker on career management and serves on several not-for-profit boards.
William J. Morin is the founder of WJM Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in executive development. Morin was chairman and founder of Drake, Beam & Morin, a world leader of career management. The author of numerous books, he has also written for publications including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, ABC Nightly News, Jim Lehrer's Newshour, and CNN's Pinnacle.
