Two conversations I had last week got me thinking about networking.

➻ The first was during a brainstorming meeting with Jon, our general manager, about our annual author conference. The meeting ended with a discussion on the value of mentoring, and the predominance of books that advocate for the practice.

➻ The second was over a drink with a friend who was joking about the state of her golf game. When I commented that I had no desire to learn the sport, she explained that she works in an industry in which golf is still an elemental aspect of networking. She challenged herself with learning the game in large part to not miss out on opportunities to build relationships.

I hadn’t really come to any conclusions beyond this one: networking can be difficult. Showing up at local events to shakes hands and pass business cards isn’t for everyone. Nor is putting a little white ball into a hole. Asking for help, confiding your struggles, taking advice: none of these things come particularly naturally for business people who often strive to appear efficient, in control and decisive. But maybe these are all just requirements of networking that are gradually becoming archaic.

Pamela Ryckman, author of Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing The Face of Business, would agree that it’s time for women to look a little differently at networking.

I’ll admit I didn’t know what to make of this book initially. Reading through the publisher copy, I was perplexed by the celebration of networking groups of women with names like the “Power Bitches”; “Brazen Hussies”; and the “S.L.U.T.S.” (Successful Ladies Under Tremendous Stress). It’s not that I’m humorless about language exactly. It’s more that I’m skeptical of the efficacy of a minority group reappropriating derogatory language in order to re-empower that word and, as a result, that group. Is it attention getting? Sure. Is it a way for a group of women to be defiant in the face of continued discrimination? Possibly. But, to me, it can also be confrontational and limiting. And because this is my personal preference, I wasn’t sure I could enthusiastically recommend this book.

That was before researching the author, Pamela Ryckman. She herself describes the book this way:

Stiletto Network is a story of female friendship—disguised as a business story, a tale of women banding together to improve lives and companies and communities, to achieve their destinies and change the world.

This ‘elevator pitch’ is warm, positive, and powerful–just like the author herself. Spend some time with Pamela Ryckman by watching the video below, and I think you’ll find yourself excited in a whole new way about networking.

Delving into the book, you’ll find the material within just as inviting and optimistic. In Stiletto Network, Ryckman recognizes a new power trend in business: women banding together to bust through those barriers that continue to impede an individual woman’s progress. She offers examples of real-life women who have found networks and mentors to help them get further faster.

While Shauna Mei [founder of AHAlife, a women-centric shopping site] seems remarkable, she is not an outlier. Increasingly, behind aspiring women entrepreneurs stand older female mentors and investors. Many of these elders made it the old way–the hard way, the way with lots of battles–but they’re now secure in their positions. Now that there’s room for more women at the top, they don’t fear being displaced by the younger, newer model. They can breathe. And after forty years of women in the workforce, isn’t it easier, not to mention more fun, when ‘you or me’ becomes ‘you and me’?

Despite the book advocating gender comradeship, Ryckman makes it clear that gender isn’t really the most important thing. “Gender alone won’t qualify any woman for membership in the club. For Stiletto Networks to be relevant and desirable, they must be rooted in shared experience and true sympathy–which means they must have some form of exclusivity.” Exclusivity is a difficult word to use in relation to minorities, and more precisely, for women. Exclusivity can act similarly to discrimination. It brings to mind “cliques” and “hierarchy” and being the last kid picked for gym class. Ryckman defends the requirement of exclusivity by clarifying that extreme inclusiveness can just cause these individual circles to get watered down and less effective. Ryckman also stresses that these networks should not become “mentoring programs” because they easily become imbalanced with young women outnumbering the experienced. Stiletto networks, she says, work best when peer-to-peer.

So is the answer to the oppression of women in business the exclusion of men? No, Ryckman says.

For occasional bonding trips, segregation might make sense. But on a day-to-day basis, men and women need to mix and…prepare to play on coed teams. It’s happening, as more boys are raised by mothers who work (yet are still involved and loving), as men strive to create opportunities for their daughters, as husbands slowly increase their share of duties at home, and as boys and girls collaborate in school. Men and women are starting, just now, to meet in the middle.

And if it takes women circling together to make their presence in business undeniable, then the added benefit, Ryckman rejoices, is that these women will enjoy the journey, and maybe even the battle, all the more because they are doing it together.

Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. and E. Tony Higgins, Ph.D., Hudson Street Books, 251 pages, $25.95, Hardcover, April 2013, ISBN 9781594631023

I was a late-bloomer in terms of athletics. While I played some middle school sports just because that’s what everyone did in our small town, book reading became my sport of choice once I tired of bench sitting. But I started playing adult league tennis in my late-30s, never having played when I was younger, and found a sport to fall in love with. It’s like active chess. A Zen koan to solve in real time.

But as anyone who plays tennis knows, the psychological aspect of the game can also be the most frustrating. I know what my physical limitations are, and accept them to some degree, but the challenge remains to not tighten up during important points, to not get sloppy if I’m winning easily, to not try too hard when I’m on the verge of winning, to gracefully accept a loss to a better player, or to turn around a match I shouldn’t be losing. In other words, learning how to focus in a way that works for me could change my game. And maybe…if I can figure that missing ingredient out on the tennis court, then I’ll be able to bring that knowledge and success to my work. So you can imagine my enthusiasm for Halvorson and Higgins’ Focus: Using Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence.

Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins run the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. As is evident by its name, the center studies what motivates people. And the somewhat surprising result of their twenty years of study is that not everyone focuses the same way based on their perception of what is good and what is bad.

We all know that people want good things–good products, ideas, and experiences–and they want to avoid bad ones. It would be nice for psychologists (and managers, marketers, teachers, and parents) if that was all we needed to know about motivation–if motivation were that simple. But it isn’t. To understand…we begin with an insight that one of us (Higgins) had over twenty years ago: there are two fundamentally different kinds of good (and kinds of bad).

So what does this mean? For some people, the prospect of rewards (money, awards, attention) motivates them. Halvorson and Higgins call this “promotion focus.” These people are strivers who value advancement despite the risks. To use a couple of clichés for better understanding, these people ‘play to win’ and view the world with a ‘glass half full’ sensibility. For other people, who have “prevention focus,” security is their primary motivator. “[F]or the prevention-focused, the ultimate ‘bad’ is a loss you failed to stop: a mistake made, a punishment received, a danger you failed to avoid.” The authors tell us that no matter which focus is your primary motivator, it affects virtually everything you do.

Some things will make sense that never did before. You’ll finally see why it’s so hard to be good with both the big ideas and the details. Why the “spontaneous” one in any couple usually isn’t the one who balances the checkbook. Why you either underestimate how long everything will take or overestimate how difficult it will be–and why someone different from you can seem so strange. You’ll understand the choices you’ve made, the experiences you are drawn to, and why you tend to prefer one brand of product to another. And you’ll be able to use that knowledge to enhance your well-being and be more effective in your life.

The first step is to determine which kind of motivational focus is your kind of motivational focus. It won’t surprise you to find out that pessimists tend to be prevention focused, while optimists tend to be promotion focused. Understanding this will not only help you set up ways for yourself to succeed but for others too. “Being able to identify and understand each focus can provide you with an invaluable tool in the workplace for increasing your employees’ effectiveness….” This understanding is transferable to many realms, such as parenting and teaching. The key is to find the “motivational fit.”

Put simply, motivational fit happens when you create a match not only between what people want and what they get, but also between what they want and how they go about getting it–the way they reach their goals.

For example, you can lose weight by eating less or by exercising more. You can realize your retirement dreams by embracing risk or avoiding it like the plague. You can make a good impression by saying more or saying less. People definitely have preferences about the way they do things–about the process, not just the outcome–and those preferences are determined by their promotion or prevention motivation.

Think about this in terms of marketing. An example the authors use is writing a pamphlet that emphasizes either eating well to gain health or to prevent illness. Are you creating a campaign that is prevention focused or promotion focused? Maybe your clients are more concerned about saving money now than they are in spending money now for a software program that might save money down the line. Maybe your customers are worried about wasting time more than they are in learning to use your product. Sometimes it is just as important to understand what the other person is motivated by.

Or, the authors explain, think about this in terms of decision making. Are you the kind of person influenced by the advantages of a situation, so you are more prone to act if there are more pros than cons? Or are you the kind of person who hesitates even when there is just one significant drawback? Just because we think we are being objective when making decisions, doesn’t mean we are actually able to see the situation without bias, particularly of the motivational kind.

Halvorson and Higgins also come to the conclusion that really successful people learn how to motivate themselves in both ways. For example, to lose weight, it’s good to be reward-oriented: lost pounds, new clothes, self-esteem. But to keep weight off, it’s better to be concerned about slipping and paying attention to the details. And understanding which motivational focus you have naturally can really help you understand why you either aren’t successful or how you can succeed in the future.

The pursuit of understanding my tennis game has definitely advanced by reading Focus. While I believe myself to be prevention focused in life, I’ve learned that I tend to be promotion oriented on the tennis court. I take a lot of risks when I play because I like to be in control of the point. (Maybe playing tennis is a little microcosm of how I’d like to be in life: more adventurous.) But the authors consider tennis players to be more prevention-focused because errors count against them, so I think I might need to adjust my approach and cut down on those unforced errors!

In sum, whether you’d like to know what prevents you from moving up in your company or winning on the court, Focus is easy-to-read and insightful. The authors say it best: “Your life is more empowered once you have learned about promotion and prevention focus and what fits with them.”

We’ve all experienced it. Maybe it was one of your professors from college who inspired you to get up before noon and actually attend her class every week. Maybe it was that actor, in that film, not the main star, but the other guy. Maybe it was one of the panelists at the conference who you wished would answer every question. Regardless, you know it when you see it: star power. And it’s hard to explain. Is it charisma? Is it confidence? Whatever it is, you want it. And the good news is that the following two books can help you get it.

Personality Power: Discover Your Unique Profile — And Unlock Your Potential For Breakthrough Success by Shoya Zichy with Ann Bidou is a new book from Amacom that fans of books like Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and Quiet by Susan Cain should gravitate toward. Zichy has come up with a “Color Q” model of the four major personality groups first delineated by Jung and then adapted via the Myers-Briggs. Zichy takes those same traits and color codes them:

Golds are Grounded, realistic, and accountable
Blues are Theoretical, competitive, and always driven to acquire more knowledge
Reds are Action-oriented, spontaneous, and focused on “now”
Greens are Creative, empathetic, and humanistic

After taking the quizzes, you will find one primary and one secondary style, as well as determining whether you are introverted or extroverted. The book then focuses on defining the colors as well as delving into the different combinations of the colors that all get their own chapter on how that personality combination can help you in a variety of work scenarios like negotiation. It can also be a guide to help managers and team leaders determine which employees will be best at certain tasks.

Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence by Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins is new out this month from Harvard Business Review Press. The authors posit that the number one quality that differentiates leaders and new hires from other folks isn’t some kind of innate and rare gift of presence, but instead is the development of a “signature voice.” The authors present a methodology called ACE:

A Signature Voice is both authentic and adaptive. You must be true to yourself and connect with others. This is the signature part.
A Signature Voice requires using two voices: the ability to demonstrate one’s value and distinctiveness and the ability to connect and align with stakeholders. This is the voice part.
To condition presence, you have to focus on your whole self: assumptions, communications, and energy.

The authors, both executive coaches, offer many case studies to walk you through the application of their framework, and include a section that can help you when you back-slide (which despite one’s best intentions can realistically happen.) The book concludes with a chapter on taking this ACE method and using it organizationally. The book is chock full of tables, quizzes and charts to help readers visualize and create action plans.

***

The common factor between these two books, Personality Power and Own the Room is that they both encourage you to be yourself, but assist you in becoming your best self.

POST & WIN! Post a reaction or question for Erika in one of her Thinker in Residence posts, and not only will Erika pop by for the discussion, but we’ll randomly pick one participant to win a copy of Leading So People Will Follow!

In our past two Thinker in Residence posts featuring the thoughtful and motivating work of Erika Andersen, we introduced you to her newest book on leadership, Leading So People Will Follow, and also shared an in-depth Q&A with Erika about strategy. We would be remiss if we didn’t also recommend her first book, Growing Great Employees, which we chose as one of the best business books written in 2007. Here’s what we said:

We also asked Erika if she could give us an idea of what motivates her to do the work she does and why there is value to be found in business literature.

Q: What is the one unanswered question about business you are most interested in answering?

EA: There are two – and they’re actually the unanswered questions about life I’m most interested in answering – I just spend a good deal of my time looking for the answers in the realm of business. The questions are “How does this work?” and “How can we make it work better?” It would be fair to say that everything I’ve created or co-created in my business, and certainly all three of my books, are nothing more or less than extended efforts to answer those questions. I get tremendous satisfaction from being able to crack the code on some aspect of human behavior or organizational function, and then give people practical guidance and support for improvement.

Q: What business book has influenced your work the most?

EA: Without a doubt, Good to Great by Jim Collins. I continue to re-read parts of it over the years, and to recommend it to new generations of leaders. It really does what it purports to do: captures the essence of how to make a company great. And it’s so engaging and straightforward, and uses the power of story so well, that even people who don’t like business books in general can get a lot out of it.

Q: What is the business book you wish you had written and why?

EA: Hmmm. That’s a tough one – I’m not aware of wanting to have written a specific book that now exists. I would, however, love to write a book that doesn’t exist (and perhaps never will, sadly). I’d love to write a book that somehow magically helps senior executives fully understand how critical it is, both on a human level and a business success level, for them to be excellent managers and leaders, and (again magically) inspires them to devote the time, effort, and self-reflection required to become the best leaders and managers they’re capable of being.

We had the pleasure of including an essay by Erika in our 2007 edition of our annual review, In the Books, that we think is still quite relevant today. Here she advocates in favor of business books and gives us a lesson in their history and value.

Why We Love Business Books More Than Ever BY ERIKA ANDERSEN

Around 1500, a guy named Machievelli wrote a book called Il Principe. It could be argued that this tough-minded little volume was the first classic business book of the western world. It was a wild time: he was advising various warring Popes and secular rulers—the Jack Welches and Sumner Redstones of his time—and Machiavelli offered advice he thought would be most helpful to them in consolidating their power and creating thriving and profitable governments. Though it’s now mostly read as a cautionary tale, an example of how NOT to lead, hundreds of generations of leaders have absorbed its lessons, and the business book was born.

The next few hundred years of western civilization (this phrase always reminds me of Gandhi’s response as to his view of western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea,” he said…but I digress) produced a few other volumes of political and economic wisdom. In 1609, for instance, Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), which helped to establish the foundations of international law by formulating the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations should be free to
use it for seafaring trade. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was one of the earliest attempts to systematically study the development of industry and commerce in Europe, and offered rationales for free trade, capitalism and libertarianism. It seemed that only a handful of people felt compelled to share their thoughts about business, and that a slightly larger handful read them.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that the business book began to emerge as an actual category. In the early 1900s, two books on business became standards in the libraries of America’s captains of industry: Henry Ford’s My Life and Work, and a book by a man named Henri Fayol, called General and Industrial Management. They offered very different opinions on business and management (Henry Ford deeply distrusted managers, though he treated his front line workers much better than most of his contemporaries, while Fayol talked about management as one of the six key elements of business success), but both focused on providing personal insights into how business should be done.

Through the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of books published about business gradually increased. Still, by today’s standards, business books had a relatively modest readership: in 1975, about 300 new business book titles were published in the US, with overall sales for the business category of just over a million volumes.

Then in the early ’80s, the whole business of business books changed—quite suddenly and dramatically: the bellwether book of this change was Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, which became the first bona fide business best seller. And over the past 25 years, the business book category has literally exploded: in 2006, almost 11,000 new business books were ublished in the U.S., with total business book sales of over $800,000,000.

Why this ever-increasing appetite for business books?

THERE’S GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS
Part of the explanation, I believe, can be found in the current American mythology that business is the best and most reliable road to fame, fortune and happiness. In fact, this mythology seems to have largely replaced other American mythologies about achieving success, such as “the overnight star,” “marrying rich,” “being plucked by fate from the chorus line (or assembly line),” “virtue rewarded” and (my personal favorite) “persisting through terrible tribulations and being uplifted by some extremely unlikely deus ex machina.” Not that these things don’t still happen (occasionally), or that people don’t pine for them, but I’ll bet if you talked to ten college students who want to become wealthy, nine would say they’re planning to do it by starting or getting involved in some sort of lucrative business venture.

This popular mythology about business, it seems to me, is an amalgam of a number of elements. First, there’s the core American belief in the efficacy of hard work and the possibility of raising oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This
has formed the basis of how we see ourselves since the very beginning of our nation: the idea that in America, ancestry is not destiny, and that people can become what they envision. Pushing westward, building the railroads, inventing, creating, refining: we have always believed in commerce as the great leveler of society.

Second, there is the assumption spawned by the Internet (the late-’90s bust notwithstanding) that if you just find/create the right product/service/idea at the right time and offer it online in the right way, you can achieve crazy-level financial success. Look at the Google guys. For most of us, there’s still enough mystery and magic about how the web actually works to enable us to imagine that any business having to do with new media might instantly result in thousands of rabbits from hundreds of hats.

Finally, we may no longer think that “greed is good” (in the words of Gorden Gekko, the creepy Michael Douglas character from Wall Street)—or, at least, most people don’t say it out loud—but the legacy of the eighties is this: that young, Bright-eyed men and women can aspire to do well in business without feeling like soulless sell-outs.

So, if we as a nation believe that there is both physical and psychic gold to be had by pursuing business, what better way to find out where to dig than by reading books that provide the needed maps? Unlike previous generations, who had to actually get out and do it (make your way to California, apprentice yourself to a bootmaker, sign up for the next clipper ship to China), we can sit in the comfort of our living rooms and look over the shoulders of those who’ve done it before us, trying to extract the lessons we’ll need to do it ourselves…or at least to let us dream—to convince us that we could do it if we really wanted to.

THE CELEBRIFICATION OF BUSINESS LEADERS
If you scan the business book shelves of any Barnes and Noble or Borders, you’ll see a lot more volumes with faces on them than in years past. Business books used to be serious—if boring—tomes in strong colors with impressive typefaces. Now, more often than not, the front cover shows a slick photo of Donald, Martha, Lee, Carly, Jack or whoever. What gives?

It seems to me the American fascination with celebrity has played a large part in boosting business book sales. As a culture, we seem endlessly intrigued with people who have lives of privilege and wealth, and over the past decade or so, we’ve turned some of our attention away from movie stars, athletes and royalty, and trained it on business tycoons. In fact, it seems that no matter what these celebrity business people are saying (or, in some cases, preaching) in their books, the real draw is that face on the cover.

When I was looking for an agent for my first book a few years ago, one of the people I spoke to—a woman who is agent to a few of these very mega-executives—told me that while my book was very solid and compelling, I didn’t have a “big enough platform.” A novice in these matters at the time, I asked her what she meant. “Well, to be quite blunt,” she replied, “you’re not famous enough.”

So, it’s not so much what these folks have accomplished or the clarity of their wisdom that sells their books—although that is, in some cases, very impressive—it’s quite simply that they’re well-known and therefore interesting. People buy books by “famous” business people for basically the same reason other people buy Entertainment Weekly or listen to Larry King—they want to find out more about people whose lives they find intriguing.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME
A few months back, when I was just beginning to think about writing this article, I was out to dinner with my 19-year-old son, and I asked him why he thought there were so many more business books being bought these days. “It’s the complexity of the undertaking,” he replied. At my quizzical look, he continued, “Imagine some guy in the Korean war. All he thinks about is getting back home and starting an auto-body shop, or a pizzeria. And when he gets home, he does it: borrows some money from his dad or the bank, rents a space, buys some stuff and starts fixing cars or making pizza. If he works hard and does good work, he hires a couple of people. Gets married, sends his kids to college. The American dream: simple.” I nodded. “Now, though, that guys’ kids want to be portfolio analysts or music producers. It’s much more complicated and shapeless. How do you do it? And they think, ‘I bet there is a bunch of books about this.’ And there is.”

I think he’s absolutely right. And I’d expand it to include the complexity of everything—not just of the undertaking. People who want to start businesses today, who want to do well in their chosen careers, or who want to figure out how to choose a career are faced with orders of complexity that would boggle the mind of that unconfused Korean war vet.

It seems to me this is the most important factor driving the exponential increase in the popularity of business books: the world—and the world of business—is a complicated place, and we want help figuring it out.

We’ve always used books to explore and to learn. Books about history to explore the past and learn the lessons of others’ mistakes; books about travel to explore distant places and learn about other cultures; books of fiction to explore invented worlds and learn about others’ experiences. Now, as we rush headlong into the 21st century, business books allow us to explore all the emerging worlds of commerce, invention and growth, and teach us how to navigate through those worlds.

Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal and Union Square Hospitality Group. You can keep up with Erika on her blog (erikaandersen.com), at Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/erikaandersen/), and on Twitter (@erikaandersen).

→ Read Wednesday’s Thinker in Residence introduction to Erika Andersen and her newest book, Leading So People Will Follow.
→ Read yesterday’s Thinker in Residence discussion with Erika Andersen on Being Strategic.

The next featured author in our Thinker in Residence series is Erika Andersen, author of Leading So People Will Follow (Jossey-Bass, 2012); Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-Think Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin’s, 2010); Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2007), and the author and host of Being Strategic with Erika Andersen on Public Television.

Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal and Union Square Hospitality Group. You can keep up with Erika on her blog (erikaandersen.com), at Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/erikaandersen/), and on Twitter (@erikaandersen).

In an informal Q&A with Erika from last year, she explained the curiosity that drives her work:

“It would be fair to say that everything I’ve created or co-created in my business, and certainly all three of my books, is nothing more or less than extended efforts to answer these questions: “How does this work?” and “How can we make it work better?” I get tremendous satisfaction from being able to crack the code on some aspect of human behavior or organizational function, and then give people practical guidance and support for improvement.”

Let’s look a little more closely at how she addresses those questions while exploring leadership in her newest book, Leading So People Will Follow.

Our Review:

Call it what you will: “Buy-in,” “Loyalty,” or “Enthusiasm.” Use whatever metaphor for the phenomenon you like—maybe “Everyone’s onboard” and “rowing the oars together”—but the simple reality is that every organization needs leaders, and leaders need followers. It’s how business gets done.

There is a lot of mythology surrounding effective leaders, but one need not be a “natural born leader” to inspire people. In her book, Leading So People Will Follow, leadership coach and acclaimed business author Erika Andersen lays out “six leadership characteristics that inspire followers to fully support their leaders,” making the qualities that define great leaders accessible to all.

As in her previous two books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, Andersen employs metaphor to illustrate her ideas. In this book, she spins readers a “folktale” of a soon-to-be prince and the princess he rescues. Using this “hero’s journey” as a device to illustrate the behaviors of “the acknowledged leader” (being Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous, and Trustworthy), she sets readers out on a journey of their own to “help you find your own happily ever after as a truly accepted, fully ‘followable’ leader.” While each chapter includes insight from Andersen’s own experience as a leadership consultant, as well as examples of real-life successful leaders, she understands that myths as metaphor have been utilized to instruct behavior since the dawn of time, and that we as contemporary business people are not immune to the effectiveness of a good story.

For example, Andersen begins Chapter 5, “Courage,” by furthering the “boy-saves-princess” tale she has been unraveling episodically since her Introduction. Here we find the “King-in-training” being pitched a rather grand and grave idea. Agree to be shrunken by fairy dust to become “smaller than an almond” in order to be shot out of a blow-dart gun and surmount the treacherous mountains that stand between him and the princess. Anderson parallels this episode with the courageous decision-making of John McDermott, the head of Global Sales and Marketing for Rockwell Automation, emphasizing that courage isn’t always physical, and can often mean “doing things that we simply don’t want to do” to benefit of a larger cause. The lesson here is that, when people watch their leaders act courageously—in their defense, for their benefit—they open up, begin to trust their leaders, and emulate that courageousness.

I have the good fortune of knowing Erika Andersen, and can tell that all of the qualities you find in the book are also in the woman. And I can confidently tell you that her new book, Leading So People Will Follow, is as engaging—-and yes, as “followable”—-as she herself is. So grab a copy, grab an oar, and get onboard!

Explore Further:

Further explore Erika Andersen’s leadership philosophy with these articles written in her own words:

In Leading–Now and Always (via erikaandersen.com), Andersen posits that “good leaders are going to become increasingly important as everything in business gets flatter, faster, more disrupted” and presents the key qualities–Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous, and Trustworthy–that leaders need to increase their effectiveness.

In Are Leaders Born or Made? (via Forbes.com), Andersen asserts that any leader, born or made, who want to become a great leader must first become self-aware. To do this takes the development and practice of three key abilities: Become a Fair Witness; Invite Feedback; Listen.

Next:

Check in with us tomorrow as we continue our Thinker in Residence series on Erika Andersen with a Q&A interview that focuses on strategy.

Over on KnowledgeBlocks I posted this passage** from Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan:

You need to acknowledge that forces from within ourselves, forces from our relationships with others, and forces from the outside have powerful and predictable effects on our decisions. Consider that most of us have no trouble acknowledging that we do not know how our kidneys or other body parts work, and we are open to learning more about them, especially when we are sick. Too often, however, we assume that we know exactly what’s going on in our minds when we face and make decisions, despite the fact that many of our past decisions have led to disappointing outcomes.

Let’s be frank: it’s easier to go through this world like a bull in a china shop. Making decisions and throwing our proverbial weight around, unconscious of the consequences. But doing that, Francesca Gino says, gets us sidetracked. It’s little wonder that we rarely achieve the goals we set out for ourselves, and that our best intentions, laudable as they are, never get fulfilled. To prevent getting lost on our way toward a good result, we need to increase our awareness of “the forces at play when our choices end up colliding with our goals….”

Gino begins her book with three chapters that look at “Forces From Within,” which can be translated into something like ‘human nature.’ We are naturally inclined, for example, to let our emotions affect our decision-making. We may not be aware that when our morning commute is delayed, we may, later on in the day, decide that a work project is taking too long getting to market, start chastening employees on their pace, and end up hurting the project in the long term. Gino elaborates:

Emotions can dramatically affect how we perceive and evaluate the world around us, yet the ways in which emotions influence our decisions are very subtle. Anger triggered by circumstances unrelated to the decision at hand can end up encouraging us to attack others’ weak ideas. Other negative emotions, such as sadness, and positive emotions, such as gratitude and happiness, can have other, equally subtle effects.

The next section of the book focuses on “Forces from Our Relationships.” As with each of her chapters, Gino uses numerous research experiments to prove just how influenced we are by our relationships with others. In one chapter, she advocates “perspective taking” and offers a quick little test for us all to take to learn whether or not we naturally take other people’s perspectives into consideration. Take your dominant forefinger and draw an E on your forehead. If you drew it so that you can read it, you are not inclined to look first to others. If you drew it so others can read it, then you do. Perhaps this little test will encourage you to cultivate perspective taking. “When you are facing a decision that involves others, try to carefully analyze it from their perspective. Given that we are social beings, our plans are likely to involve others….So, the decisions we make when following through on our plans can easily be derailed by the failure to take others’ perspective.” The section also includes a chapter on a “feeling of connection” or, how being ‘in’ or ‘out’ affects our decisions, and also, “social comparisons” or, how our motivations change when compared to the performance of others.

The final section of Sidetracked tackles the “Forces from the Outside” which many of us probably fear the most. We feel pretty knowledgeable about our own minds (sometimes erroneously) and our relationships with other people (again, sometimes to a fault), but forces from without strike us as uncontrollable and sometimes unpredictable. Gino helps us to understand in “They’re Not as Dumb as You Think They Are” why the “inability to adequately account for a wide range of situational factors when evaluating others helps to explain many of our most serious mistakes in life, and many derailed decisions.” In other words, we often attribute or evaluate situations incorrectly due to bias or blindspots. In her chapter intriguingly titled, Traveling to Europe on Pudding, Gino explains how “…the effects of framing on motivation by discussing how framing can sway our decisions regarding how much effort to exert in completing a given task, from a reward program to one’s own job….the subtle changes in framing can cause us to veer from our predetermined path.” (The reward program referenced here is an offer by a food product company to provide airline mileage for every bar-code, from pudding and other items, redeemed.) The result? We are very willing to buy a heck of a lot of pudding if the reward is framed enticingly enough! Gino closes the section with a chapter titled “Cheaters in Sunglasses” in which she includes experiments that suggest that when no one is looking, we are all more likely to behave badly.

If you have always yearned to feel more secure in your decision-making, or at the very least, understand better why even your best-laid plans often go awry, Sidetracked is a straight-forward examination of the forces that affect our decisions which can help raise your awareness and keep you from veering off course.

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