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Shaunti Feldhahn is a groundbreaking social researcher, consultant on women’s leadership issues, best-selling author, and speaker. A former Wall Street analyst, with a master’s from Harvard, Shaunti took the path less taken and now applies her analytical skills to the startling research of what men and women each privately think in the workplace and at home; perceptions that we rarely hear but that affect each of us every day whether we realize it or not.
This information is game-changing for women in business, as seen in Shaunti’s latest book The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace. Based on nearly 10 years of interviews and surveys with more than 3,000 men, Shaunti uncovers what high-potential women need to know about the secret, unfiltered thoughts and expectations of their male bosses, colleagues and customers – high-leverage information that allows women to be far more influential and effective in accomplishing every one of their own goals in the workplace.
Shaunti’s findings are equally eye-opening in personal relationships; her books, such as For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men, have sold 2 million copies in 20 languages. Currently consulting and speaking globally for women leadership audiences, Shaunti has appeared on media outlets as diverse as The Today Show, CNN, Fox, PBS, Soap Talk, Focus on the Family and Family Life Today.
Shaunti’s tips for being a transformational leader:
Know yourself. If you don’t truly understand your strengths and weaknesses, you cannot play to your strengths, and you certainly will not compensate for your weaknesses. But if you know who you are, and what you can do, and rigorously focus on that, while turning down seductive opportunities at which you will not shine, you’ll not only be great at what you do, but you’ll be very fulfilled! And a positive, fulfilled leader is a transformational leader.
Know and manage how you are perceived . One of the great missing pieces of the puzzle for many potentially great leaders is not recognizing how they are perceived. The most important issue is not just that you have excellent leadership gifts, and a lot to offer. Rather, the most important issue is whether others see you that way! You can only be a leader if others see you as someone to follow. And so you need to know how you are perceived and take charge of that perception.
Know your audience. But you can only do that if you know your audience. If you do not understand the inner, private thoughts, expectations and perceptions of those you are speaking to, you can never manage how you yourself are perceived. You won’t recognize a misperception and be able to head it off, and you also will miss great signals that tell you that you have an opportunity here on which you can capitalize. But once you are skilled at reading your audience – at getting inside their heads, at understanding their private expectations, you can speak to those expectations and position yourself as the person who always “gets it” in their eyes. The person who “gets it”, who reads others like a book, who is able to articulate back to them what they most desire, is a person who others will follow.
Becky Blalock is SVP and CIO of the Southern Company. She directs information technology strategy and operations across the 120,000 square miles and all subsidiaries of the company. She leads more than 1,100 employees in information technology delivery to one of America’s most respected companies. In this segment she talks about what it takes to be successful as a CIO and her mentoring advice for others.
