You - According to Them

Learn the secrets of accelerating your journey toward success by better understanding yourself and how others perceive you. You --According to Them will offer practical steps to help you leverage the perceptions of a great reputation into bottom-line success. If you've ever worked in an organization of any size, you've probably seen it: the talented geniuses with all the right credentials who don't really seem to be going anywhere in their chosen careers. Sometimes that "talented genius" is us, and we are hard-pressed to understand what's blocking our ability to advance. In her this book, Sara Canaday draws on her years of corporate experience and research to not only explain WHY smart people can end up with stalled careers, but also HOW they can fix the problems (or avoid them in the future). The timing for this insight couldn't be better, given today's increasingly competitive work environment. You -- According to Them deals directly with the blind spots and perception disconnects we all face as we navigate our own sometimes-winding career paths. Sara identifies eight different "syndromes" using very distinct characters and case studies from her 20 years of work on the subject: Don't Fence Me In Intellectual Snob Frozen Compass Dust in My Wind No Crying in Baseball Safety Patrol Faulty Volume Control Passion Pistol Perpetual Doer In each chapter, Sara describes one of these blind spots in detail, along with a list of "quick fixes" for fast response. She also closes the chapter with a long-term action plan and specific exercises to guide readers through the process for conquering that particular syndrome. "Once we understand the power of our personal reputations," Sara says, "we can begin to see how others' perceptions of us can impact our ability to compete in the marketplace -- for jobs, for raises and for promotions."