Product Description

For three decades businesswomen have been told that the key to advancing is to "play like a man." Candy Deemer and Nancy Fredericks, corporate consultants and authors of Dancing on the Glass Ceiling say that it's playing like a woman that will get a woman to where she wants to be, relying on her inherent, feminine-based strengths to distinguish themselves as leaders: exceptional communication skills, team-and-relationship building, intuition, and a supportive mindset that nurtures both their companies and their employees. The real-life stories, research, insights, techniques, and advice in this book illustrate the potency of those feminine-based skill sets. Written in a friendly, workshop-like tone, Dancing on the Glass Ceiling combines conceptual wisdom with accessible, practical guidance for all professional women for the present and ever-changing business world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1447932 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Back Cover
"A wonderful, insightful book to guide women to the top of the pyramid and to their fullest potential as leaders and women in the fullest sense of both terms."

Mark Bryan, author of The Artists' Way at Work

For as long as women have been in business, we have struggled within a world dominated by the subconscious belief that women are somehow "less than" men. Instead of daring to stand out, we've shaved off little pieces of ourselves to fit into the accepted, masculine-driven pattern of business. Dancing on the Glass Ceiling teaches women how to utilize the power and effectiveness of playing like a woman. After all, mimicking the macho leadership styles of successful businessmen is not what launched female powerhouses such as Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, and Kimberly Clark Executive Vice President Kathi Seifert into upper management.

In Dancing on the Glass Ceiling, authors Nancy Fredericks and Candy Deemer teach you how to:

-Identify your inherent winning skills and utilize them to climb your way to the top
-Recognize the internal behaviors and attitudes that sabotage your natural work style and learn to transport them into supporters of your success
-Gain confidence to develop and implement your ideas and achieve your true goals
-Make yourself promotable, respectable, and powerful through self-tests, introspection, and advice from women who've done it

About the Author
Nancy Fredericks spent over 20 years managing Operations and Human Resource functions in a variety of large law and CPA firms in L.A., eventually reaching a Director position in a Big Five accounting firm. She is the founder and president of Nancy Fredericks International, a 12-year corporate consulting firm specializing in improving business results by shifting people and processes. Candy Deemer has 20 years' experience in the advertising industry. She devoted the last 17 years to DDB Worldwide Communications in L.A., where she rose through the ranks as a "trailblazers" - the first woman in to hold a position in each management position. Candy has managed major accounts in the health care, airline, finance, fashion, fragrance, packaged goods, and fast food industries. She has extensive experience and connections in new product marketing.

Customer Reviews

Extraordinary � written for my soul
Have you ever worked harder, longer and taken on more responsibility, to find yourself passed over for promotion - probably by a male collegaue who networked and communicated more?

Have you ever been called "bitchy", "bossy", "ambitious" for behaving exactly like the men around you who were called "strong", "visionary", "masterful"?

Have you ever felt that "your insides don't match your outsides, felt "tired and cheated".

Then this book is for you. Deemer and Fredericks' message is clear. If you feel like the round-peg in a square-hole, don't shave off bits of yourself to fit better. You will be miserable, and indeed - the core message of their book - you will actually reduce your chances of succeeding.

Why? Because the very characteristics that are generally, and often disparagingly, attributed to women - intuition, relationship-building, communication skills, creativity are the very skills that lift people from the ranks of manager to the higher levels of leadership. Intuition and creativity enable a leader to be visonary, to take risks, to rise above those around her. Powerful communication and relationship-building skills enable a leader to empathise, motivate and persuade others to follow.

It is hard to do justice to this book in a summary. Deemer and Fredericks have created a mentor in a book. It is a mix of theoretical analysis, insights and practical advice. It is a workbook - almost a text book. It is not just for light armchair reading. It is dense and deep, but clearly written and compelling. I read it from beginning to end, and am now returning to do the exercises. There are plenty of lighter and fascinating anecdotes (many of which gave me that strange spine-tingling feeling you get when you seem to be reading about yourself). But the exercises are challenging and require some commitment of time, soul-searching and effort.

The advice is practical and no-nonsense, yet fully justified and clearly explained. The book is never trite and it never irritates. It is inspirational, but not gimmicky. It offers no quick fixes, yet some of the advice can have instant beneficial results. Because it is so exactly targetted at the problem and so perceptive - be intentional rather than effortful; find the solution within yourself; distinguish between true intuition and random internal thoughts, and much, much more.

The book is structured in a systematic and logical way, flowing naturally from one chapter to the next. It begins with a long hard look at what we want - values, goals, career plans. The middle section deals with some specific steps to maximise your feminine skills, dealing with internal attitudes, expanding your job, increasing your skills set, and professional relationships. And lastly, it goes back to a holistic look at leadership and techniques for enhancing your working and non-working life.

If considering a new edition, I would suggest modernising the layout and typeset of headings. At the moment it looks like a slightly old-fashioned college text book. Also the contents need breaking down into sub-sections to more easily locate specific topics within the long chapters. After all the book is so good that one will want to refer to it time and again. But these are minor points. Overall the book inspires, it is not the key, but the many keys, to doing better and feeling better, by being true to your instincts.

So get the book. Who knows if it will make you soar to new stratospeheric heights, but it will inspire. And meanwhile, there is help for dozens of aspects of your professional performance, relationships and feelings - starting right now.