book reviews OFF THE SHELF
DARLING, YOU CAN’T
DO BOTH AND OTHER
NOISE TO IGNORE ON
YOUR WAY UP
Janet Kestin and Nancy Vonk
Harper Collins, 2014
From two of the leaders be-hind
Dove’s Campaign for
Real Beauty and two of Ad
Age’s “100 Most Influential
Women in Advertising” comes
a straight-talking roadmap
for all working women. Filled
with hard lessons they and
other women learned, the au-thors
illustrate how women
of different generations are
embracing and redefining am-bition
– that women’s careers
do not follow the straight path,
often zig-zagging toward goals
that fulfill them rather than
the stereotypical brass ring.
By Alyson Nyiri, CHRP
Talking point
Though there are still structur-al
changes urgently required in
order for women to take on
more positions of power and
authority, there is still a case to
be made for the simple act of
reaching out to the woman be-side
or behind you.
THE KEY: HOW
CORPORATIONS
SUCCEED BY SOLVING
THE WORLD’S
TOUGHEST PROBLEMS
Lynda Gratton
McGraw-Hill, 2014
Over the coming decades, cor-porations
will be profoundly
affected by several trends such
as the rebalancing of global
markets for goods and labour,
hyper-connectivity of peo-ple
and jobs, increasing skills
gaps and poverty and inequal-ity.
Yet corporations contain
resilient and creative people
who, working together, can
develop strategies to overcome
the complexity facing them.
Gratton pushes things fur-ther,
saying that these resilient
and creative corporations can
and should become anchors
in their communities and ad-dress
global challenges.
Talking point
Gratton writes, “What will
differentiate leadership in the
coming decades is not just
what the leaders choose to do
within their corporations but
also what they choose to do in
the world.”
Talking point
How well do your orga-nization’s
strategies foster
employees’ capacity to handle
the demands of their jobs? ■
Talking point
Today’s social leader must
learn how to harness social
energy rather than creating
meaning and control. What
are the implications of this for
developing leadership talent?
BRING WORK TO LIFE
BY BRINGING LIFE
TO WORK: A GUIDE
FOR LEADERS AND
ORGANIZATIONS
Tracey Brower
Bibliomotion, 2014
Work-life strategies are the
many policies and practices
used by organizations, de-signed
to give flexibility and
options for workers. Brower
argues that work-life balance
is a zero-sum game in which
work and life are mutually ex-clusive.
Work-life support,
conversely, is an integrative
approach, recognizing the re-lationship
between work and
life. It supports employees in
navigating their life-course by
offering strategies that reduce
perceived demands and in-crease
perceptions of capacity.
THE SOCIAL LEADER:
REDEFINING
LEADERSHIP FOR THE
COMPLEX SOCIAL AGE
Frank Guglielmo and Sudhanshu
Palsule
Bibliomotion, 2014
Hierarchical workplaces are
quietly being replaced by commu-nities.
Information is so quickly
attained and shared that leaders
today need to understand they no
longer control it. The Social Age
has upended the business world
of planning, forecasting and strat-egy
to a world of ambiguity and
disruption; one in which lead-ers
need to engage stakeholders
across and beyond their formal
sphere of responsibility. The five
tenets of social leadership that
help leaders shift their thinking
for a community-based organiza-tion
are: mindfulness, proactivity,
authenticity, openness and social
scalability.
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ SEPTEMBER 2014 ❚ 53