Leadership Book Review Blog: How Women Rise

How Women Rise was written by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, two top notch coaches, in an effort to help women break the 12 habits that hold them back when it comes to raises, promotions, and career growth. They could have easily led the (female) readers down a path to believing that everything they HAVEN’T achieved in life is because they are women. To be honest, that was a concern of mine before I started reading the book. In an effort to persuade myself to start reading, I invited several professional and ambitious women in my network to meet up and discuss the book. It worked, the thought of talking about career growth with others who have the same goals encouraged me to get going.

The authors are very clear that both men and women can demonstrate these unhelpful habits, however, they see them more in women. The habits are:

1. Reluctance to claim achievements

2. Expecting others to spontaneously notice and reward your achievements

3. Overvaluing expertise

4. Building rather than leveraging relationships

5. Failing to enlist allies from day 1

6. Putting your job before your career

7. The perfection trap

8. The disease to please

9. Minimizing

10. Too much

11. Ruminating

12. Letting your radar distract you

I could relate to 1, 3, 4, 9, and 11. Reading the client examples they shared gave me a lot to think about, or ruminate on. Shoot. MUST STOP RUMINATING. Not only was it easy to identify these habits for myself, at least one of these habits has presented itself in every client conversation since then. I’m even recognizing them in casual conversations within my network. To me, that means the authors did an excellent job compiling data, summarizing results, prioritizing the top behaviors holding women back, and putting language to them to help us relate.

So why is it that women are seen as incredibly successful leaders, but are not achieving all of the career success they set out for? Because we are still operating within systems that were designed by men, for men, a long time ago. And that is how success is defined. While those dynamics continue to shift towards more modern convention, it behooves us to understand the habits that will serve us well.

In this book you will encounter thought-provoking questions and practical advice for eliminating habits that aren’t helping you and creating new habits that will serve you well. One of my favorite takeaways was to not only create a To Do list but to also create a To Don’t list.

If you still have runway left in your career, whether you are a man or a woman, I’d recommend this book. If you’ve thought about hiring a coach, this would be a good, cost-effective first step. It’s often easier to recognize what we need to change than to actually make the changes. And that’s where a good coach comes in.

I am here when you are ready.