Rising Together

How we can bridge divides and create a more inclusive workplace

I’m looking forward to 2023 for many reasons, not least of which is that my new book, Rising Together, will be published by Hachette Book Group on February 28.

In fact, it’s already available for pre-order here.

Like How Women Rise, Rising Together focuses firmly on the how–– in this case, the how of building effective relationships across traditional boundaries and divides.

I was inspired to write the book four years ago, while presenting at the Construction SuperConference, a massive annual event traditionally held in Las Vegas. At that time, a few months before Covid shut the world down, it filled both the Wynn I and the Wynn II, huge hotels at the north end of the famous Strip.

I was scheduled to deliver a breakout session on women’s leadership, and figured I knew what to expect: perhaps 100 or so women in the construction sector who were struggling to get recognized for their contributions in their heavily male-dominated companies.

So I could not have been more surprised when I arrived to find a much larger standing-room only crowd comprised of nearly 70% men. Of course, I’m often told that men will be present at my women’s leadership events, but until then only a handful had usually attended.

This marked a departure, so I began by asking some of the male participants what had inspired them to attend this session. Most of them talked about the problems their companies had hiring and retaining women. As one noted, “A lot of the best talent these days is female, so if we don’t get better at engaging women, we’re not going to have much of a future.”

I’d been making the same points myself for some time, but was gratified to hear them affirmed. Then one executive stood up and said bluntly, “We hope you’re not going to waste our time telling us why developing women is important. We know all about the whys. What we don’t know is how to do it.”

This stopped me cold, and I thought, well, it’s going to be my job to provide you with answers. Four years later, Rising Together is my response to that executive’s plea for some ‘hows’.

But given that organizations continue to grow ever-more diverse, I’ve expanded my response to include a range of potential divides– ethnicity, race, age and sexual orientation– in addition to gender.

The first part of Rising Together identifies the 8 most common triggers that undermine our ability to build effective relationships across these divides. The second part focuses on specific inclusive behaviors that can help us engage allies across a range of boundaries: the everyday ‘how’ of inclusion.

I like this focus because it frames diversity in a positive way. Rather than concentrating on unconscious bias and microaggressions–– which can indeed divide us, and which have often been the focus of inclusion efforts–– it goes a step further offering a pragmatic and positive way forward.

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In this book, a follow-up to my international bestseller, How Women Rise, I draw on three decades of work with leaders around the world to offer practical ways to build more inclusive relationships, teams and workplaces.

As noted above, participants in my workshops often say, “We get the problem. We just don't know how to deal with it.”

Rising Together provides constructive actions to take in full detail not just by identifying both the most common triggers that hold us back but by providing specific, often tactical behaviors we can employ to help move everyone forward. By focusing on behaviors–– how we act–– rather than bias–– how we think–– I hope to redirect the conversation about inclusion in a grounded, real-world way that brings us together.