Friday, November 16, 2007

It's Not a Glass Ceiling,

It's a Sticky Floor: Free Yourself From the Hidden Behaviors Sabotaging Your Career Success.

I served as a panelist today on the topic of "Going Global with Your Idea" at the Ninth Annual Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Conference at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship. When I was done with the program, I visited their bookstore and found all sorts of new books that I was unaware of.

It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor is one of them. Looks interesting. Haven't read it yet. Check it out.

Here's what Publishers Weekly says:
Forget the old boys' club: women are the ones holding themselves back from top-level career success, advises Shambaugh, president and CEO of consulting firm Shambaugh Leadership. Though more businesswomen are in successful positions of power, they are still lagging behind men at the highest levels: more than a third of Fortune 500 managers and more than half of those with multidisciplinary master's degrees are women, yet women hold only 13% of Fortune 500 CEO positions. This lack of forward motion is due more substantially to women's own career-inhibiting behavior than to cultural impediments, Shambaugh claims. Women are more likely than men to shy away from leadership roles, to get bogged down in perfectionism and to avoid career-boosting changes out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. Through a series of exercises and self-appraisals, Shambaugh guides readers with executive suite aspirations through an evaluation of their own behaviors and skills, gauging which serve their ambitions and which are holding them back. Emphasizing strategic relationships, communication and the elements of executive presence, she writes in an encouraging tone with a refreshing lack of blame, making this a satisfying read for women stuck in middle management limbo.
This is definitely not a read for women entrepreneurs or women business owners. We know better.

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