Her Place at the Table: A Woman's Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success

MCKNIGHT • KANEYHOME SERVICES EVENTS TEAM STRATEGY MAPPING BLOG FREE STOREThe Most Useful Business Book I’ve Read In Five YearsAugust 24, 2017 Rick McKnightScreen Shot 2017-08-24 at 1.43.15 PM.pngHer Place at the Table: A Woman's Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership SuccessBy Deborah Kolb, Judith Williams, and Carol Frohlinger, JDJossey-Bass, 2010, 250-pages, $19.95I read a lot of business books. I need to: in addition to consulting and coaching, I frequently conduct seminars on leadership, strategy formulation, and strategy execution.About two years ago, I was coaching the President of a health system in NYC, a very capable woman. Her healthcare system had just been taken over by a medical school/healthcare system. She wanted help navigating the thicket of a political scene she was not familiar with. The new boss wanted her, but her big question was: Could I succeed in the new system?To support her in making her decision, I did not hesitate a nanosecond in recommending Her Place at the Table. Here’s why:The book is about how to negotiate and succeed in a leadership role. In my view, negotiation is the most needed leadership skill yet the one least developed in my clients. It tells how to determine whether to take a new executive assignment, and, if the answer is yes, how to secure the organizational support needed to succeed in it.The book describes the traps and dilemmas women uniquely face when in leadership positions. The authors observe that overt sexism is pretty rare these days, but what they call “second generation gender issues” (more subtle but still problematic) continue to operate and can trip up even the best female leaders. An example is a question that almost never gets asked but is often on the hiring manager‘s mind: “Will her personal life get in the way?” The assumption by many is that a woman will not be willing to devote as much time to the job as a man will.The book is 95% applicable to men as well as women. In my experience, people on both sides of the hiring interview—candidate and hiring party—lack skill in navigating the hiring process. This book has helped a number of my male clients become far more effective in these situations, and there is another benefit for men in reading it: the books sensitizes the male reader to the difficulties women leaders face, helping them to rid their own hiring practices of gender-bias.As to the benefit men will get from the book, I recommended it six months ago when a coaching client informed me that he was applying for the presidency of a university. Did I have any advice for him as he prepared for this process? “Read Her Place at the Table immediately,” I said. “This book will help you formulate questions that will enable you to see deeply into the political system,” I told him, “and understand the field of forces that will support and hinder your success.” Two days later, he told me he had read most of the book and it helped him a ton.Then, three months later, another male coaching client told me he was applying for a new job. I not only urged him to read Her Place at the Table, but also gave him the assignment to formulate 10 questions he would ask during the interview process that were inspired from the book. Later, we used those questions (and others I concocted) in a role-play job interview. One of the questions he came up with was, “Which term best describes the role of the person who will succeed in this job: builder, fixer, maintainer, or transformer?” When he went through a day of interviews, this question stopped everyone in their tracks, but all of the interviewers answered it. Interestingly, there was a lot of disagreement among their answers! This him gave the same answer and the subsequent exploration gave him exceptionally rich data about the system. Brilliant!One chapter in the book is addressed to each of the "Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success” mentioned in the subtitle. While each of these have been addressed by other books, these authors take a very, very practical approach to addressing how to navigate each challenge and their negotiation perspective is enormously practical. Here are those Five Challenges:Drill Deep (do in-depth diligence)Mobilize BackersGarner Resources (how to get the resources needed to succeed)Bring People On BoardMake a DifferenceThe authors, drawing on their extensive consulting backgrounds and ideas put forward in their previous book, Everyday Negotiation: Managing the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining, articulate principles one should follow when addressing each challenge. Through vivid examples they show how others have managed these tasks . Each chapter opens with a statement of the goal of each challenge and the traps to avoid. Then, the bulk of the chapter is organized around very specific tactics one can take to meet each challenge, again illustrated beautifully.In addition to recommending the book to both male and female clients, I am using this book in a nationally-renown women-only leadership course.Regardless of whether or not you are seeking a new position or whether you are male or female executives, Get this book! Hurrah to these authors.

Very Interesting and useful. Thank you

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I found it very detailed in explaining why women have been left out of the board rooms and ways that we are able to get ourselves there. There are many books on the market right now about women and how to break the glass ceiling. This book is one of the best that I have read in this category. I will be recommending this book to all of the women that I know. This book is not only practical for those women in the workplace but the ideas presented can be applied to various aspects of any woman's life.

Practical, pragmatic and helpful as I work to build my own non-profit focusing on strengthening women and girl's confidence in their abilitities and to be comfortable with power. The book cites useful research on how women are perceived as leaders and offers suggestions on how women can overcome social and invisible hurdles in order to make their voices heard. It also contains valuable information on how to navigate through gender stereotypes, identify sponsors and negotiate for roles and responsibilities that set you up for success.

I like this book because it provides techniques to use that really do help get your seat at the table. They worked for me and still working!

There are many assumptions about why women have a hard time attaining and keeping leadership positions in business. Many assume that it is because women don't ask, lack talent, aren't interested or there just aren't enough of us in the pipeline. While those issues contribute to the problem intheir own ways, what happens to us when we do get into these positions? Why are people still wondering whether or not women are capable of leading?This book highlights women that are out there and in leadership positions. It highlights some of the issues that many women have when they get into leadership and what they did to negotiate success for themselves. There's a lot more to negotiating a new position, particularly in leadership, then salary and a start date.The reader is walked through five challenges that women face. Each chapter contains the challenge, common traps, and the strategic moves suggested to overcome them. There are multiple examples of women who fell into the traps and others who used the strategic moves to improve their standing, their departments and their overall organizations when dealing with these challenges. While leadership is a constant work in progress, this book specifically addresses those moving into positions that are new for them, whether that department is failing or successful before they get there.I appreciated the range of situations that it addressed, from government to corporate jobs, as well as the detail given to each possible set back. The Road Map at the end was helpful in pulling all the information together for one clear picture of the problems at hand.Expect to see this on my books after Graduation list. It may be directed at those moving into leadership positions, but anyone could benefit from reading it ahead of time and becoming proficient at these techniques for moving into any position where they hope to make a difference.

Nice book!

It's hard to find the books on women's leadership, which are on our reading list. I was happy to find this one at a reasonable price.

Every woman should read this! Thorough and eye-opening for leadership negotiation.

I rarely don't finish a book but I couldn't keep going with this one. The authors tried to include lots of examples of 'real' people but they were deathly boring and didn't add colour to the points that were being made.

best book i have read in many years