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The Little Black Book of Success
Laws of Leadership for Black Women
On BAN Radio Show with Ella Curry |
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 About Elaine Meryl Brown
Elaine Meryl Brown, former VP, Creative Services at HBO, is an Emmy® Award-winning writer and producer who has won numerous awards in the broadcast industry. In 2007, Brown was chosen as one of The Network Journal's "25 Influential Black Women in Business." A favorite of Black Enterprise, she was featured in the magazine and at their Women of Power Summit. A Wheaton College Alumni Trustee and member of the Coalition of 100 Black Women (Bergen/Passaic Chapter), Brown is also the author of two novels published by One World. She lives in New Jersey. For more information on Elaine visit www.elainemerylbrown.com
About Rhonda Joy McLean
Rhonda Joy McLean is Deputy General Counsel of Time Inc. and former Assistant Regional Director of the Northeast Region of the Federal Trade Commission. A graduate of Yale Law School, she served as chair of its alumni association, which has more than 10,000 members, and was recently elected to its fund board of directors. In 2007, McLean was chosen as one of The Network Journal's "25 Influential Black Women in Business." Born in Chicago, IL and reared in Smithfield, NC, McLean is a classically trained pianist and mezzo-soprano. She performs sacred music with chorales throughout the New York metropolitan area, where she resides. For more information on Rhonda visit http://www.rjmcareertransitions.com
About Marsha Haygood
Marsha Haygood is a powerful motivational speaker and a dynamic career and personal coach. She is the founder of StepWise Associates, LLC, a career and personal development consultancy that represents the culmination of her 25+ years experience in human resources. She was the EVP of Human Resources and Administration at New Line Cinema and at Orion Pictures, among other companies. Haygood has won numerous awards including the YMCA Black Achievement Award and the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources Trailblazer Award. In 2005, Haygood was chosen as one of The Network Journal's "25 Influential Black Women in Business." She and her husband live in New York and Florida. For more information on Marsha visit www.StepwiseAssociates.com (Photo Credit: © Gerald Peart)
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Little Black Book is a #2 Bestseller on Amazon in the "Management and Leadership" category!
Nearly 40 percent of black women report that they don't have other black women who can serve as role models, and there have been no books that specifically focus on black women and leadership-until now.
Black women in today's workforce face unique challenges as they seek to advance their careers. Performing as well as their colleagues is not enough to win leadership positions; they also need a special brand of strength and confidence to rise above the double burden of racism and sexism and tap into their true leadership potential. But where can they turn for advice?
With THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF SUCCESS: Laws of Leadership for Black Women (A One World Hardcover; March 2, 2010)-an engaging and invaluable resource guide for black women at any stage of their professional lives-Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, and Rhonda Joy McLean have pooled almost 100 years of collective wisdom and leadership experience to create the guide they wished they had along their own remarkable career paths.
What these dynamic, successful black female executives show is that the building blocks for success are often right below the surface. As they point out, "although they're able to get jobs, many of today's young black women don't realize they have the potential to move themselves forward. Many black women hold leadership roles in their communities, schools, and churches, but aren't aware that they can transfer skills from those leadership positions to the workplace. Research indicates that their talents often remain invisible both to the women who possess them and their business managers. But leadership can be taught."
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Intimate Conversation with author Rhonda Joy McLean
 Rhonda Joy McLean is Deputy General Counsel of Time Inc. and former Assistant Regional Director of the Northeast Region of the Federal Trade Commission. A graduate of Yale Law School, she served as chair of its alumni association, which has more than 10,000 members, and was recently elected to its fund board of directors. In 2007, McLean was chosen as one of The Network Journal's "25 Influential Black Women in Business."
Born in Chicago, IL and reared in Smithfield, NC, McLean is a classically trained pianist and mezzo-soprano. She performs sacred music with chorales throughout the New York metropolitan area, where she resides. For more information on Rhonda visit www.rjmcareertransitions.com
BPM: Who are your mentors? Where do you find your personal inspiration?
RJM: My co-authors Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood and the other members of our "Girls Night Out" group are my peer mentors, and we have been helping each other move forward personally and professionally for many years. My parents and my maternal aunt are also mentors who have believed in me from the very beginning. I am grateful that they are still with me. They are extremely supportive.
My grandmothers, who have been gone a long time now but who still live in my spirit, inspire me. They were each extremely powerful women who rose above their limited circumstances to bring their families out of poverty into spiritual and actual abundance and intellectual achievement. They were awesome! I hope that the work I do every single day honors them and all of the sacrifices they made so that my family members and I could thrive.
BPM: Introduce us to the primary message in The Little Black Book of Success.
RJM: Our primary message is that leaders are not only born, leaders can be made and many African-American women are unaware of their leadership potential. We believe that our book provides practical principles of leadership that can guide women, indeed, anyone of any gender or race as they navigate their career pathways and attain leadership positions in any employment sector, including entrepreneurship.
BPM: What motivated you to write this book with Elaine Meryl Brown and Marsha Haygood at this time?
RJM: Each of us mentors a large number of younger employees of all backgrounds and ethnicities and we have found that while they may be highly educated, they have often not been exposed to leadership development strategies. They also may not be aware that the leadership skills they display in their communities - in church or service organizations - even in social clubs and sports groups, can be transferred effectively to their workplaces. When our co-author and team leader Elaine Meryl Brown researched the issue of leadership, she found no books on leadership for and about Black women and we set about changing that fact. We have each been working for 30 years or more and felt that we should share the learning we had obtained over those years. We also wanted to write the book we wish we had had access to when we set out in our careers.
BPM: What issues in today's society do you address in the book?
RJM: We are quite candid in the book about institutional racism and sexism and their pervasive influence in many workplaces in America. However, we also prescribe specific strategies for using the challenges we face as professional women of color to inspire us and invoke our creativity so that we can find new and innovative ways to become the leaders we know we can be. We also dispel the myth that Black women cannot work together and support each other -- that we "pull each other down." We have been friends for more than a decade and have worked closely together for four years to write, publish and promote this book. We are still friends and continue to enjoy working together.
We also speak frankly about self-sabotage in our "cultural code" sections that can be found in every chapter and how we can "get out of our own way" to achieve leadership success.
BPM: There appears to be a limited amount of Black women in media. Industry wide, do you think women in media lack aggressiveness to promote themselves?
RJM: I don't agree, we hear this all the time about the personality of women, their unwillingness or inability to promote themselves, and therefore getting stagnated in their positions or not being able to project what value they are bringing to the bottom line.
This is the reason I wrote my book [The Little Black Book of Success] so that women understand that you are your own best advocate, and you have to step outside your own comfort zone to do so.
What we say in the book is that you have to get used to and study the culture of the community that you're in. There is a certain way that people work and a certain way that they promote ideas, and if you don't get that then it's going to be very difficult for you to move forward.
Specifically at Time though, we've initiated a unique program that has been very well-received. In order for people to get exposure to the executives regardless of demographic, race or gender, and be able to ask how to become a CFO or the COO, we started what we call speed career dating. We get 20 or 30 very senior people throughout our organization to commit to spend two hours with us where they each sit at a table. Junior people then can sign up for an eight-minute date with these executives. So while you're not interviewing for a job, you are talking about your career trajectory, and asking questions on how did you get to do what you're doing, what are your responsibilities, etc? We done this several times with great success and it's become a great way to involve senior management and get them to see the diversity of people we have on the bottom who are trying to move up.
BPM: Who should read The Little Black Book of Success and why?
RJM: Our book has been embraced by young people who are about to enter the job market, as well as high school, college and graduate school students. Many mentoring organizations have found our work to be useful as they provide career guidance to their program participants. We also recommend our book for anyone who is already working, no matter where they are along their career timeline. Even very senior employees (male and female) and retirees have told us that they find our book to be helpful to them, as many of them are considering career transitions and/or launching businesses of their own. We believe that ANYONE can benefit from our work, since the basic leadership principles that we have identified apply across a wide variety of organizations.
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The Little Black Book of Success
by Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, and Rhonda Joy McLean
Genre: Business & Economics - Motivational
Self-Help - Personal Growth
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