Drawing on three decades of research, writing, and speaking about the organizational benefits of women leaders and strategists, Sally Helgesen presents practical methods and tactics for an effective, inclusive, and successful workplace.​
 
When Sally Helgesen speaks to corporations and conferences she hears again and again, “Please don’t spend your time making the case for why developing and retaining a diverse workforce is important in our industry. We get it. We just don’t know how to do it! We haven’t got a clue.”

When it comes to building honest and fruitful male-female and other inclusive relationships in the workplace, everyone is seeking clues. Men often feel constrained, unable to be themselves, uncertain when honesty might give offense. They feel puzzled when well-intentioned efforts to promote women to senior levels continue to fall short of their objectives. They wonder why women leave jobs that look great on paper or decline to pursue higher positions. In addition, the #MeToo movement has left some men skittish about getting too close to female colleagues. A 2019 Lean In survey revealed that 60% of male managers interviewed had concerns about mentoring women.

For their part, women wonder how to gain the attention of men who seem unable to hear what they have to say in conferences and meetings. They fear that while speaking up may get them tagged as arrogant or aggressive, holding back will identify them as too timid, not ready for primetime. They’re unsure how to claim their achievements without being seen as undermining the team. They wonder how to thread the needle between being too much and not enough. And they struggle to gain access to established networks that could smooth their path to the top. 

Rising Together will offer practical advice to help both employers and employees move past impediments and establish relationships built on authenticity and trust.
 
Part 1: 8 Common Triggers identifies the triggers most likely to sabotage relationships at work in ways that can undermine  careers,  teams, and ultimately  organizations. These widespread yet mostly unacknowledged triggers include differences in how people approach ambition, competence, perceptions, fairness, communications, networks, attraction, and humor.

Par 2: A Template for Change lays out key practices that support our ability to build trusting and fruitful relationships in the workplace. These include the highly specific inclusive behaviors, a method for informally enlisting allies to support the practice of new behaviors, and a means for demonstrating authenticity while trying new approaches. Each chapter uses real-world stories that describe challenges and solutions in narrative detail, all will be drawn from Sally Helgesen's experience working with clients around the world and from the dozens of interviews she will conduct, focusing on male and female executives, professionals, high-potentials and individual contributors in a range of fields and sectors, and high-profile coaches and leadership experts such as Marshall Goldsmith, Tom Peters, Rao Srikumar, Sanyin Siang, Chester Elton and many others. 

Rising Together is for readers at every stage in their careers who recognize that building effective relationships in the workplace is essential to their future advancement. It is an indispensable resource for HR, diversity, learning and training professionals tasked with addressing the misunderstandings, resentments, and derailments caused by the 8 triggers.