Deal With Stress The Simple Approach
I’ve chosen a short but very useful book for you this review. Deal With Stress is a book from the Everywoman organisation, a great resource for women in business.
I’ve had the book a while but I still find it helpful. It starts with a useful little quiz to help you measure your stress levels and then moves sequentially through the signs and symptoms to strategies for tackling it.
It has a clear no nonsense approach, making it easy to dip into and read. Here’s an extract from the book:
Step Two: Recognise the mental and physical impact (of dealing with stressful relationships and bullying)
Don’t be tempted to live with the difficulties of having a troublesome work colleague, or seek ways to minimise the impact he or she has on your working life. Avoidance tactics can be time consuming and stressful.
Focus on your own health as this may encourage you to tackle the issue rationally and try to reach an accommodation that will prevent you from jeopardising your health or feeling that you have to leave your job.
Step Three: Determine when the line has been crossed.
Often people find it hard to know whether the line of harassment has been crossed. If they confront the perpetrators, they can be accused of ‘being a poor sport’, or worse. Such accusations are often levelled to mask what is going on and can seriously undermine the victim’s confidence.
The book is part of a series called The Simple approach and that is exactly what you get; easily understood practical and simple advice in a small, compact and reasonably priced package. Currently the books cost £6.99 and can be ordered through EveryWoman’s web site.
How Women Mean Business!
‘How Women Mean Business’ is the follow up to the highly successful ‘Why Women Mean Business’ which Avivah Wittenberg-Cox co authored with Alison Maitland. I loved that book as you can see from my review, so approached its successor with no little trepidation. Could it be even half as good as the first?
‘How Women Mean Business’ is a solo effort from Avivah . It has a sub title of: ‘A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business’. And that is exactly what you get – a manual of how to successfully introduce gender bilinguality into your organisation and a copy should be in every HR department and library. It is another excellent resource book!
Four Stages
The book takes the reader comprehensively through 4 stages to achieve a more representative gender balance in business. The four stages are:
Audit – looking at the actual statistics in an organisation, benchmarking, and talking to employees, women and men.
Awareness – ensuring top managers truly understand the case for gender balance and the opportunities it presents them.
Alignment – training requirements, the talent in the organisation.
Sustain – how you maintain the change and measure progress.
Here’s an extract from a section on inviting senior managers to a first meeting on achieving gender balance:
“Avoid invitations signed by HR, Diversity, or a women’s association. That would limit and label participant’s view of the session before they even enter the room.
The invitation should introduce gender balance as a strategic lever for achieving other 21st century change initiatives.
Be careful………[not to call it] something like ‘Gender Training’ sessions generating endless jokes before the session starts. Instead, describe the session as a strategic debate, not as a training or awareness workshop. The invitation must start with the key messages, vocabulary, and positioning of the effort. That way, it will control how the issue is perceived, and what response it prompts.”
Role Models
As well as pithy and practical advice on the actual steps to take, the book also gives examples of organisations that have had success not only with gender issues, but also increased profitability. I will be featuring some of these examples in other blog posts as it’s an absolute treasure trove of information.
Highly Recommended
You’ll have guessed by now that this is a book I highly recommend. It’s not an easy read but it’s an interesting and informative one. I read the latter half of it while stuck on a train and realised I was mouthing ‘yes, yes! ‘ a lot of the time, possibly creating the wrong impression of the type of book I was reading to my fellow passengers…
But as a feminist it is pure joy to read this type of book. It doesn’t simply point out the faults in most of the working environments in the western world, but it gives an entirely credible and practical approach for remedying them. If you’re seriously interested in gender issues, man or woman, go buy it!
The book is available from all good bookshops, libraries, and Amazon and is published by Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-68884-7
Recover Your Balance
Recover Your Balance is written by Ann Lewis, a leadership coach, and published by Bookshaker. It sells at £9.99 in the UK and $14.99 in the U.S.
It’s a great little book, easy to read in one sitting at just over 140 pages with a seven step plan to boost you back to full confidence! And it’s also great for dipping into any time you feel a bit overwhelmed. It’s a book to pick up when you’re feeling tired and worthless at work, when going to work is sapping and energy draining, when you’re feeling burnt out, or lacking in confidence about your abilities.
Bullying
Ann herself experienced bullying at work and she talks honestly and helpfully about the effect it had on her and her subsequent crisis of confidence.
Following an unsuccessful appeal, after which my Staff Council representative declared that he had never seen anyone quite so comprehensively stitched up, I spent the next few months trying to be absolutely perfect, an endeavour doomed to failure. My daily routine included vomiting every morning before I left home. Finally, after taking a couple of days leave, I returned to find that a part of my team’s work had been passed around…in an effort to demonstrate that I was failing. I resigned. For more than two years afterwards I simply didn’t believe that I was worthy of a well paid job with similar status to the one I had left. Page 4/5 of Recover Your Balance
This book is the result of her reflections and ruminations on that period, her extensive experience of coaching others in similar situations, and her recovery plan for minimising the effects and learning from the experience. It’s a blend of the practical and the more esoteric.
For example, Ann talks about energy states and the impact these have on our behaviour, and there is advice on using visualisations and creative imagery to relieve stress. In another chapter she gives some supremely practical advice about only keeping material relating to poor treatment at work as long as it is serving a purpose. If you are thinking about bringing a case of constructive dismissal for example, keep a record of everything. But if the incident is done and dusted, holding onto unpleasant and damaging material can be detrimental to your recovery! Sage advice.
True Stories
Scattered throughout the book are quotes from real people sharing their experiences of troubled times at work. These really help to bring the book to life. My only small criticism of the book is that I found some of the true life stories slightly repetitive, but then I read the book at one sitting. I’m sure if you were picking this book up occasionally you’d be glad of some of the repetition as a helpful reminder!
I think this a worthwhile book to have in your possession, or to encourage your firm to buy! It’s not preachy, but full of sensible advice, well referenced and not at all patronising – you can tell that Ann has been there and done it, and bounced back!
You can purchase Ann’s book at good bookshops, or order through Amazon, or visit the Recover Your Balance site
Why Women Mean Business
Why Women Mean Business is probably the most frequently referenced book in my library! It was published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons and written by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland. Well done them!
If you are in business at all, male of female, I recommend this book to you.
If you are a woman looking to move on, I recommend this book to you.
If you are an academic studying gender issues, I recommend this book to you.
And if you’d like a sound economic case as to why women should be properly catered for in today’s workplaces, I recommend this book to you.
You will have gathered by now that I thoroughly recommend this book!
Why?
It is a well researched account of some of the issues women face at the top of organisations. But it’s not a rant or a moan. It’s also a guide on how to remedy them, packed full of useful advice, facts, statistics and case studies. It makes the business case for women in senior roles, not simply an ethical one. And it’s eminently readable.
Here’s an extract from Chapter 5 ‘Seven Steps to Successful Implementation’.
‘Becoming bilingual begins with a shift in perspective. It depends on recognising that responsibility for better gender balance lies with all managers, not just with women. It focuses its efforts on teaching the current majority to become bilingual, fluent in the language and culture of both men and women. Only once all managers understand that the methods and messages used to recruit, manage and evaluate men do not necessarily work for women will women’s talents stand a chance of being accurately recognised and optimised.’
You can watch the authors talk about their book here and you can buy it from all good book shops, borrow it from your local library, encourage your workplace to acquire a copy, or purchase it via Amazon
