Flex - The New Playbook for Managing Across Differences

Book description

The workplace around the world is changing—growing increasingly multicultural, female, and younger. Experts often tell CEOs and managers what not to do, and corporate diversity programs can often appear to be like defensive measures against lawsuits and harassment charges. While technology has connected all of us as a global workforce, it has not equipped us with the capability to interact genuinely with people. In order to be successful in this new global business environment, we need to rethink the way we lead others.

Flex offers a new approach—a proactive strategy for managers to understand and leverage difference effectively in this new global economy.

Flex shows managers how to

  • understand the power gap—the social distance between you and those in the workplace of different cultures, ages, and gender;
  • stretch your management style and bridge the gap with more effective communication and feedback tools; and
  • multiply the effect by teaching these skills to others and closing the power gap with clients, customers, and partners to create innovative solutions.

Creating flex in a company's management style will affect all aspects of developing existing leaders, attracting future talent, and building relationships with customers in this competitive marketplace. Flex shows you how.

Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. Contents
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. Glossary of Key Terms
  6. Part I: Getting Inside the Gap: What Keeps Us from Connecting
    1. Chapter 1 - What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: How We (Don’t) Talk about Difference
    2. Chapter 2 - Managing the Power Gap
    3. Chapter 3 - Culture and Communication: Flexing across Styles
    4. Chapter 4 - Portrait of a Fluent Leader
    5. Fluent Leader Profile: Rosaline Koo—Building Fluency Beyond Stereotypes
  7. Part II: The Killer App: Flexing Across the Gap
    1. Chapter 5 - Power Gap Principle: Flex Your Management Style
    2. Fluent Leader Profile: Don Liu—Bridging the Gap through Generosity of Spirit
    3. Chapter 6 - Navigate the Power Gap with Your Peers
    4. Chapter 7 - Go the Distance with Your Superiors
    5. Fluent Leader Profile: Erby L. Foster Jr.—The Fluent “Agent” and Champion
    6. Chapter 8 - Connecting with Customers and Partners
    7. Profile: Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital—Health-care System Identifies Innovative Solutions for Patient Needs
  8. Part III: Multiplying Your Success
    1. Chapter 9 - Onboarding Your Employees—Getting It Right from Day One
    2. Fluent Leader Profile: Steve Miola and Ray Bain, Merck Research Laboratories—Creating a Fluent Company Culture
    3. Chapter 10 - Mentors, Sponsors, Coaches, and the Gift of Feedback
    4. Fluent Leader Profile: Rich Hille—From the Baseball Fields to the Corporate Boardroom: Leading a Winning Team
    5. Chapter 11 - Leveraging Diverse Thinking from Your Teams to Drive Innovation
  9. Conclusion
  10. Bibliography
  11. About the Authors
  12. Credits
  13. Copyright
  14. About the Publisher

Product information

  • Title: Flex - The New Playbook for Managing Across Differences
  • Author(s): Jane Hyun, Audrey S. Lee
  • Release date: March 2014
  • Publisher(s): HarperCollins Publishers
  • ISBN: 9780062248534