Sally Helgesen on Women's Leadership

For anyone in the workplace, the question of how to move to the next level is complex and often personal. As leaders and managers seek higher responsibility and authority and impact, we often find that the very skills that got us to where we are now aren't especially useful in moving forward.

For women in the workplace, this challenge often can be even more complicated. Few people have thought, written, or spoken more on the subject than Sally Helgesen, world renown women's leadership expert and co-author with best-selling writer Marshall Goldsmith of a really important new book, How Women Rise, Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back from Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job. Sally notes that women's distinctive strengths and behaviors provide them with many advantages. Yet the very habits that help them early in their careers can hold them back as they seek to rise. How could women identify and address the habits most likely to get in their way as they seek to move to a higher level?

Some background on Sally. She's an author, speaker, and consultant with a clear mission to help women recognize, articulate, and act on their greater strengths. She's written a number of books, including the best-selling, The Female Advantage, Women's Ways of Leadership, held as the classic work on women's leadership styles, and continuously in print since 1990. Sally delivers workshops and keynotes in corporations, partnership firms, universities, and associations globally. She's consulted with the United Nations, and led seminars at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Smith College. So how do women rise? That's what we discussed.