What Every Successful Woman Knows: 12 Breakthrough Strategies to Get the Power and Ignite Your Career

Women have made important inroads into the corporate world, but the true power in corporations remains overwhelmingly in the hands of the men. Only 12% of corporate officers are women, and less than a third of those have profit-and-loss responsibilities.

What Every Successful Woman Knows offers 12 proven strategies for women who have set their sights on the executive suite. Derived, in part, from in-depth interviews with more than 200 successful senior corporate women, these strategies embody an array of critical dos and don’ts—from building a power base to avoiding becoming a generalist (multispecialize instead)—and a range of key tactical behaviors, such as bonding with your boss, exuding authority, and seizing the significant and dumping the insignificant. Together these strategies constitute a coherent action plan for getting the power in an organization and wielding it effectively.

Janice Reals Ellig is a managing director and partner at the executive search firm of Gould, McCoy & Chadick. A specialist in organizational change, succession planning, and management development, Reals Ellig was previously with Heidrick & Struggles and held executive-level marketing and human resources positions at Ambac Financial Group, Citibank, and Pfizer. Quoted in Fortune, Mademoiselle, Working Woman, and Newsday, she is a regular speaker on career management and serves on several not-for-profit boards.

William J. Morin is the founder of WJM Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in executive development. Morin was chairman and founder of Drake, Beam & Morin, a world leader of career management. The author of numerous books, he has also written for publications including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, ABC Nightly News, Jim Lehrer's Newshour, and CNN's Pinnacle.