Own it!  Lean in! Create a Feminist Fight Club. Drop the Ball. Hardball for Women. Taking the Stage. Advice for women on how to succeed in today’s workplace is everywhere. Although such advice is valuable and needed, it can fall short of the mark when used as “one size fits all” advice.

So a major goal in writing my new book – Understanding Gender at Work – was to integrate this existing information with what I know as a consultant, psychologist and lawyer to provide career strategies and skill development advice for women at different ages, stages, and career levels.

Here are the key informational aspects of my book that I believe are important for women to know to ensure and enhance their advancement and success in the workplace.

1. Know the Rules of the Game. To be effective and make your value visible in a masculine workplace you need to know the rules of the game. This includes knowing what is rewarded and viewed as successful, having organizational awareness, and expanding your repertoire to include those styles that may have been natural to you when you were young but were suppressed and discarded during childhood training. Unless you know the gender norms that are in operation at work, your skills, talents, and abilities will be lost in translation. This awareness is of particular importance to young women coming out of high school or university. Assuming that workplaces operate the same as educational institutions, which are meritocracies, and not knowing what is valued and rewarded can be extremely detrimental to their career success.
2. Know Your Value and Strengths. Recognizing your value in the workplace and the power you have is crucial. You will be better able to see when a feminine style is effective and your perspective powerful. Often women feel powerless when, despite their best efforts, they are not successful at work. By recognizing when the game favours the man’s way, you discover the disconnect and are able to move forward with more confidence and awareness. Future trends greatly favour the feminine, so the approaches, talents, skills, and strengths learned as a girl in childhood are on the cusp of being the centre of the game.
3. Know When to Switch It Up. By knowing best practices and when feminine approaches work best, you can start to selectively and strategically use the styles most of us learned in childhood. (For example, the most effective leadership styles are those associated with feminine approaches. Ironically the least effective one – command and control– is the style most commonly associated with leadership.) This information will also help you to know when to switch to masculine approaches. This ability to switch is a powerful advancement tool for women.
4. Recognize Unfair Tactics and Gender Bias. Once you know the rules of the game, you will be better able to spot gender bias when it’s operating. It can be evident in organizational policies that favour the man’s way or corporate structures that align with outdated family structures. Gender bias might be at play when others use tactics to gain an unfair advantage, such as stealing ideas or interrupting. Once you start to recognize it you can begin to shine a light on it, perhaps by having that brave conversation with others or by pointing it out to leaders. You have to know the rules of the game to clearly recognize unfair plays and be able to call them.
5. Appreciate When to Tap into Your Power. Know when the fit is not good, when you are tired of contorting to the demands of a masculine workplace, when the rules don’t work for you, or when your value is not being recognized. This knowledge allows you to leverage your power and pivot. This might mean moving to another position where the salary is better, the corporate values align with your own and the work is more meaningful and fulfilling. This could mean starting your own company where you get to create organizational structures and policies that disrupt old gender scripts.

From my experience in coaching and training women I know that women who have this information are more likely to stay in the workplace, to succeed and advance, and to help others succeed and advance. Women with this information are able to understand how to play the game and avoid being blindsided. They recognize that understanding the invisible dynamics of the workplace gives them a significant career advantage.

My new book is for women who want to advance and succeed at work. It’s for those who find themselves working below their level of competence, skill, and talent mainly because they are women. It is for young women who think the game of work is rigged against them. This book provides options, career strategies, and practical tools for preventing this while waiting for organizational changes and societal shifts. Until a future that favours the feminine arrives, and the trends show that it is coming, women can benefit from understanding the invisible gender hurdles they face at work and learning how to deal with them.

Although meant primarily for women, this book is also helpful for men and women who mentor and champion women. The advice set out in this book will also be of benefit to men who don’t follow traditional gender scripts and may be subject to gender bias as a result.

I wrote this book to support and encourage individual women achieve their career goals. Ideally this information will also move us towards gender equality. With all of us working together we can make a different. I would love to hear what you think women need to know to succeed at work and how we can help move the needle on gender equality.